alt Hacker NewsSupreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
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Let's see how many flunk Literacy....
How does one value a start up asset that according to ByteDance will never ever get access to the TikTok algo powering the app?
It appears at the moment, the only one to bet on who knows what the eff they are talking about is Mark Cuban who wants to pay or buy someone creating a new tiktok clone that uses the Bluesky protocol
Prediction: We'll hear that magically Truth Social has sourced sufficient funds that will enable it to make an offer for TikTok.
This seems like a bandaid, maybe the real national security is that US companies cannot build a product that can compete with TikTok.
This makes it easier for those 170M users to find new homes with President Musk's X or any of Zuck's advertising products.
TikTok is fun but it has degraded into a commercialized mess of copycats, IP theft and scams.
Like everything else that is commercialized on the internet. It has a lifespan of a few years before it becomes unusable to all but the meek and the ignorant.
A new service will emerge and replace it within months. The truth is their algorithm is about as complicated as a HS algebra test.
Can someone explain in unambiguous terms why people are so drawn specifically to TikTok? I have tried TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and they are all basically the same--algorithmically-driven feeds of short videos. I don't see how banning TikTok is such a big problem, just use one of the other apps.
Great twitter thread analyzing the Supreme Court decision from a former Congressional Staffer who now leads a think tank doing tech-focused policy work: https://x.com/marcidale/status/1880274466619691247
I think in the future people will look back at kids on social media, like we look back at kids smoking cigarettes.
I'd love to see what a global ban for TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and X would look like. Even better: massive breakdown of iOS and Android installations. Just for a couple of weeks, then revert to the nightmarish status quo we live in. Now that would be an interesting experiment. The change in people's behavior would be palpable for those fourteen days, I bet. It'd be so much fun.
I'm not sure how many dimensions this chess game is being played in, but if I were a lawmaker I would be wary of unintended consequences.
Overall, I view this is as an admission to US populace and the world that the US is a weak-minded country that can easily be influenced by propaganda.
I love all the comments saying that the Supreme Court doesn't understand the first amendment.
There's a lot of hope for the other services but Europe, Australia, Asia are not moving away. A lot of people watch videos from other countries, and if they aren't on those other services I don't think they'll stick.
I can't imagine the ban can't be circumvented with some creative use of VPN, geo spoofing etc. If I were a TikTok fan, I'd launch an Android emulator in a VPS in a censorship free country and install TikTok there.
I don't have a list of factors or research in front of me, so let me just state that upfront.
It's widely understood that Meta, X, and plenty of other companies are collecting, and selling massive amounts of data. Meta builds profiles on people that have never even used Facebook, simply by monitoring their activity across the web through Ads, Embeds and Sign-Up w/ Facebook widgets, etc. This data, if I recall, has been sold many times over, and likely stolen, many times over, in data breaches - both disclosed and undisclosed. Which almost assures that China has it already.
Where is the outrage there? The laws, and fines, there? Why not ban that kind of pervasive data collection and digital finger printing, regardless of where it originates, to avoid the potential misuse of that data?
Obviously a company, like ByteDance, running businesses and Apps inside the US, while also being legally bound to helping the CCP - is cause for concern. But clearly we have our concerns right at our front door - and - nothing? Either or government believes access to this kind of data to be a threat, or they don't.
I know that's a gross over simplification, probably misses some key points, and probably falls under the dreaded "whataboutisms"... but it just seems like, its okay of US companies do it, as long as they give that data to OUR government, and losing that data is a just cost of doing business.
I'll take my tinfoil hat off now. :P
Many people here upset about this.
Here's what recently happened in Romania, all through TikTok.
Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected. Without TikTok, this would not have happened. I have talked about this with Romanians who concur.
In the real world, there are two responses to this.
1. "Tough luck, it's too late now, should just stand by and watch the country get taken over".
2. "Ban it and future popular big platforms controlled by a foreign adversary".
That's it. We'd all love for something inbetween. It's not happening, all such options would end up becoming 1). That's the state of the modern day world.
The facts that
A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it
B. "The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan that would have X owner Elon Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations"
C. The remaining mountains of evidence that it is a CCP tool
Mean that the arguments of Congress here are valid and this is the right decision. It is a tool directly controlled by a foreign adversary, for geopolitical, not profit-oriented, purposes. This is nothing like the PATRIOT act or other moves by governments that claim "protect the children" or "protect against terrorism" for some ulterior motive of surveillance or worse. It might be a rarity, but in this case the claims by Congress are factual and a sufficiently good reason.
I’d be fine with a general rule that if China (or anyone) places limits on US social media that effectively limits / bans them… same goes for Chinese social media platforms. Done.
Thank goodness! I don’t know how anyone thinks this isn’t a good idea for America.
> A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
You can also include Canada and India in that list as it’s banned in those countries
Very sad moment for the united states. Banning an app because the users are too critical of israel/support palestine, and they cannot control it.
It would be interesting to see TikTok go full scorched earth and become a mega pirate movie, music, TV, streaming sports site.
What happens to the copyright on these videos?
Yeah! If China wants our data they'll have to buy it from data brokers like everyone else!
It's crazy the Facebook and Instagram are still available for use. They,be done just as much damage.
If what TikTok is doing is dangerous when TikTok does it why is it safe when everyone else does it?
This is theft, pure and simple. The government-industrial complex is trying to steal this app. The private side wants to make money and the public side wants yet another way to control narratives on social media much the way President Musk does on twitter.
We all know the Elephant in the room, that Israel‘s genocide in Palestine led to lots of criticism on Tik Tok, and that led the Israel lobby to push a Tik Tok ban.
TikTok should just build out a PWA. That would be a huge fuck you to this whole situation.
This won't ban anything. It's on the web. Just sideload the app and enjoy.
Looks like India set the way here. Wonder what it holds for US India relations.
> but Trump might offer lifeline
Is this the same guy who wanted to ban TikTok 4.5 years ago? Just asking.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
Is it possible that Truth Social would acquire it before Monday?
The ban is nothing more than an attempt to abridge speech and deny the youth voice in politics. TikTok increasingly has become refuge from censorship occurring on other platforms (see the recent issues). The lawmakers indicated that is the reason for the ban.
If United States was honestly concerned about data protection and privacy, it would devise a federal privacy law that models GDPR. They are trying to pass a federal law now, but it is seriously flawed and they are trying to preempt more user-centric privacy laws of the states.
Finally, such partisan, targeted and unprincipled bans reenforce that EU's approach on issues such as data transfers abroad (see Schrems 1 and Schrems 2) is perfectly valid. EU has a principled regulation, which gets evaluated by free and democratic courts. The outcomes are what they are. Not partisan and discriminatory, as they are here.
Everyone has been in denial - this was always the most likely outcome.
This outcome is worse than I could have ever conceived:
1) People have valid concerns about TikTok. TikTok will remain, and those concerns will remain.
2) People have valid concerns about free speech. The law that tramples free speech stands and is upheld by the court.
3) People have valid concerns about unfair and unequal enforcement of laws. The law will be blatantly and openly ignored for political reasons.
Literally everyone loses. What a clown show.
As a free speech absolutist, I hope that what comes out of this is a completely anonymized, uncensorable alternative. We've gotten the arbitrary censorship walled garden social media sites mostly because until now there hasn't been any particular reason for most users to step outside of them.
If the youth of the rest of the world keeps using it, the US culture attention will be replaced by something else.
This might be another step in the US journey of losing their role as a superpower nation to become just another country.
It isn't a "ban" except that TikTok would rather shut down than sell, forgoing billions of dollars in the process.
What I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.
Since the ban is about not allowing app stores to host TT, can TT build its own App Store to offer the download of its app, given that Apple has to allow other app stores?
ITT: How many languages Switzerland has.
Maybe someone smarter than me can explain - how both Biden and Trump can hint or announce they wont enforce the law. Signed laws upheld by the Supreme Court can be filtered out by the President? News to me.
I only take this as a geopolitical decision. Not saying that the US couldn't do that (like any other country) but adding arguments that also apply to other social media apps as well is, IMHO, FUD.
You don't destroy what can give you even more power by controlling it. Trump/Musk/Zuck plan is to control it, not destroy it: the army of teens willing to be inundated by propaganda just to keep using it is too appealing to ignore, and China will happily trade that control for something (less/no tariffs?).
Surprised some American billionaire hasn't thrown 50 Milly into like 5 clones of tik Tok to see which one takes off?
there should be an easy pivot to an American equivalent but there hasn't been?
Or has there?
Kinda funny we have a president that can and will just ignore the Supreme Court and laws
I believe Biden says his admin won't enforce the ban, as they only have 1 day left in office after it goes into effect.
Trump has signaled he doesn't support the ban, and wants tiktok under american ownership. The legislation allows the president to put a 90 day hold on the ban too.
So my guess is that this isn't over yet.
This is great news!
This whole thing is both silly and unsurprising.
Everybody knows the fearmongering about Chinese control and manipulation is a smokescreen. The real reason is that Tiktok doesn't fall in line with State Department propaganda [1].
It's noteworthy that SCOTUS sidestepped this issue entirely by not even considering the secret evidence the government brought.
That being said, it's unsurprising because you can make a strictly commerce-based argument that has nothing to do with speech and the First Amendment. Personally, I think reciprocity would've been a far more defensible position, in that US apps like Google, FB, Youtube and IG are restricted from the Chinese market so you could demand recipricol access on strictly commerce grounds.
The best analogy is the restriction on foreign ownership of media outlets, which used to be a big deal. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, US companies would defend themselves from foreign takeovers by buying TV stations, for example. That's basically the premise of the movie Working Girl, as one (fictional) example.
Politically, the big loser here is Biden and the Democratic Party because they will be (rightly) blamed for banning a highly popular app (even though the Congressional vote was hugely bipartisan) and Trump will likely get credit for saving Tiktok.
I personally don't think that it is going to be a big issue. India banned TikTok, but it is still accessibly on the browser via a VPN. And everyone has a VPN installed on their phone these days. What is stopping people from just opening tiktok in their browser on their phone and continuing to browse their old accounts and content?