once again - not a ban, a seizure. Steve Mnuchin is heading a group of government insiders who want to buy TikTok, and this bill bans it if and only if they don’t sell. The government has decided that TikTok is a dangerous propaganda and espionage network and intends to steal it and run it themselves. Even if you think that TikTok is that dangerous you have to ask yourself: why is it legal for everyone else and why does our government want so badly to do it themselves?
Yup. And the precedent this sets is horrifying. Even monopolies get due process. Being able to declare a company as a foreign enemy and force them to leave the market or be bought out is a ridiculous measure in a supposedly free society.
Because then Facebook will pay for your reelection campaign?
First off, source? Second, the npr interview I heard mentioned specifically that China has to approve the sale because the algorithm is proprietary to a Chinese company. So anyone “buying TikTok” is buying a name and none of the actual bones of the social media platform
Aren’t the bones the cheap part now? Think truth social for instance, why was it supposedly worth so much if anyone can spin up a Mastadon instance and make it the same restrictions over the weekend. The userbase numbers are all that mattered there I assume. Why is reddit worth more than Lemmy? Is it because the bones are expensive? Or is it that they have access to a large userbase already.
so they can do the death penalty on a company, they have a model
they just don’t do it to Exxon or Facebook or Monsanto or…
Whew the propaganda smokescreen almost fully fell apart with people waking up and seeing us support Genocide. Good thing we went full authoritarianism to stop it!
Free speech was always a lie I guess
Oh no, this includes “aids” to Israel isn’t it…
Why the hell do Israel needs more money?! They are not even close to poor…
pay for each Palestinian murdered, raped, or tortured.
I honestly don’t like tiktok but this is clearly done to censor the pro palestine content and for exposing the US gov along many others as hypocrites
This has been discussed way longer than 10/7/2023.
but curiously now is when it was acted on.
True, I remember talks about it being acquired by a US company but I think this really pushed it over the edge for them
yep. Facebook’s still running strong, and that company has been a part of how many fucking genocides now?
All parties involved are asinine. The lawmakers, the company, both governments, the voters and the users.
China should force apple to sell off it’s Chinese business to a Chinese company.
And the floodgates are opened, washing us down the slippery slope of all kinds of new censorship
Biden signs bill criticized as “major expansion of warrantless surveillance”
This also happened a few days ago
The free market for me but not for thee
US apps all banned in China.
Yeah, that’s true, but China doesn’t claim to be a beacon of capitalism
Something we can all agree on at least I would think
The government telling us which social media platforms we’re allowed to use? No I don’t think we agree and I don’t even use TikTok.
That’s kind of how I feel about it. Don’t use it (or any other social media actually) but if the government is unwilling to shut down hate platforms like truth social then they really shouldn’t meddle with something like tiktok that’s mostly just kids being dumb.
Seriously doubt it will kill it
At best it’ll create another spin-off like the hundreds that already exist on the app/play stores.
No doubt
It won’t, but it will be sold, and the moderation and censorship practices will change.
Lmao. Sure buddy.
Ok who’s gonna buy it?
Steve Mnuchin.
Long as it aint musk or bezos or gates
if this thing is being sold because it’s a propaganda and data mining risk, selling it to a cohort of government insiders doesn’t make me feel better.
Pretty sure last time around there were potential buyers. I think Walmart was one of them, and so was Oracle.
I imagine we’ll see the same names pop up again.
I wonder how strange your own public policies must be to accept a situation like this… don’t they see the impact this will have on thousands of people who literally need this platform? I don’t think so… the American big tech lobby has the loudest voice, right?
