Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power

Are we acting like the US isn't the biggest surveillance state existing in all history?

So because there's one app they don't control the data on, we need to ban it? Sounds like the free market to me.

Yes, and?

Does anyone think that China is just full of the warm fuzzies and wants us all to hold hands, make smores and sing kumbaya? They are every bit after power as the US is to hold onto it.

Large centralised social media platform should all be banned. I miss the times when all you had was forums hosted in someone's basement, the Internet was a better place. Short form video content is the worst of the bunch though.

Permanently Deleted

Democrats have convinced themselves taking over TikTok is the solution to their problems, but the reality is that if Joe Biden signs this bill into law when he is already tanking in the polls, particularly with young voters, he will hand the election to Trump. The youth will not forgive a party that was so extreme it banned or hijacked their favourite platform to censor them in order to keep a genocide going.

Best line is at the end

They didn't care about it being China owned

They didn't care about data sharing

Share info on the platform the US can't censor though and then it's ban time 😂

Yes, I too would love the US president to decide which social media platforms I am allowed to legally use and who I can legally communicate with. I'm so scared China is going to, checks notes, influence my opinion that I'm willing to sacrifice my free speech rights in the process. Regulate me harder, daddy! 😍

The probability of a war between the US and China is very high as judged by the US military. Prominently over the Taiwan situation. Having service members with tiktok on their devices would be terrible for opsec. To me this confirms that we are continuing to track on that train of thought. With that line of thinking this seems to an increased likelihood. Be careful out there folks.

Just my thoughts...

Yikes, what a flawed set of premises.

" What if Canada did the same thing to the US? They did!"

No, they didn't. Canada tried to boost Canadian media presence on American streaming platforms.

Making sure gooby gets an international viewing is very different from transmitting information to an overtly hostile government known for cyber attacks on its international peers.

"The platform isn't a national security threat".

It's a fact that the app TikTok is based off of, Douyin, sends the private data of every user straight to bytedance, owned in powerful minority stake by the Chinese government and that tiktok did the same thing with US user data until they promised they stopped a couple years ago.

As of January 2024 however, whoops, US citizen data(names, birthdates, location) is still being sent back to bytedance: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203?mod=followamazon

It's not some baseless concern, it's a national security consequence against data disclosures that were already carried out and have continued to this year despite assurances 2 years ago that data leaks to bytedance are not happening.

"Instrument of soft power"

Marvel movies becoming super popular internationally is an example of soft power. Gathering the personal information of users with a continuing precedent attacking US digital infrastructures and democratic institutions is not soft power, it is hostile statecraft.

I am not a proponent of monolithic tech companies nor am I particularly aligned against international competition in tech supremacy, but this ban isn't about theoretical cultural competition.

This tiktok ban is about the recent gathering of personal information that can be used to assess and attack digital infrastructures and electoral behaviors by entities that are continually attacking digital infrastructures and electoral processes, entities focused on consolidating power not within some international free market of soft cultural influence but by gathering and consolidating power and using that power to forward state ambitions.

Bans can be bypassed, but my concern is if the new law makes it criminal to use tiktok. If so, the media should stop saying "tiktok ban" and instead say "new law makes it a crime to use tiktok"

Seeing as how Mussolini has a daughter who is alive today and just as fascist as their father, is this person Marx' descendant?

The platform isn't a national security threat, but a challenge to silicon valley's dominance

No, I'm pretty sure it's just both

The main point is that tiktok can persuade people politically and cannot be sued by the US government. So it must be owned by a US entity so it plays by our rules... keep the same asshole politicians in power. You want bridges and got no rivers? A Republican or Democrat can deliver! And ofcourse all the partisan stuff like religion in school, freedom for everyone etc.

What a braindead post with a braindead comment section. Just kids raging about thinks they don’t understand

The TikTok ban is The Patriot Act 2.0

Has anybody actually read the bill?

The whole bill is about giving the government power to ban "foreign adversary controlled applications" and there's nothing about the president being able to ban whatever app they want.

The bill defines a foreign adversary as: "a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code":

• The People's Republic of China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China);

• Republic of Cuba (Cuba);

• Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran);

• Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea);

• Russian Federation (Russia); and

• Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro (Maduro Regime).

So unless you are on the side of the enemies of the US and want social media apps controlled by them, I don't know why you wouldn't support this bill.

Edit: I think the misunderstanding/misinformation comes from a few places, but ultimately I think it boils down to the fact the bill requires the app/platform to be a foreign adversary AND it requires a presidential executive order before the app will be banned.