alt Hacker NewsSupreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
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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.
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.
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.
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.
It would be interesting to see TikTok go full scorched earth and become a mega pirate movie, music, TV, streaming sports site.
TikTok should just build out a PWA. That would be a huge fuck you to this whole situation.
What happens to the copyright on these videos?
This seems like a bandaid, maybe the real national security is that US companies cannot build a product that can compete with TikTok.
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.
> 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...
Thank goodness! I don’t know how anyone thinks this isn’t a good idea for America.
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.
Yeah! If China wants our data they'll have to buy it from data brokers like everyone else!
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.
Looks like India set the way here. Wonder what it holds for US India relations.
Everyone has been in denial - this was always the most likely outcome.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?).
I love all the comments saying that the Supreme Court doesn't understand the first amendment.
Kinda funny we have a president that can and will just ignore the Supreme Court and laws
I think in the future people will look back at kids on social media, like we look back at kids smoking cigarettes.
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?
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.
Here is what Chairman McCaul said: “I was proud to join 352 of my Republican and Democrat colleagues and pass H.R. 7521 today. CCP-controlled TikTok is an enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”[1]
The U.S. national security angle identified is "mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions". And give me a break that they actually care about "young Americans’ mental health". This bill was about pro-Palestine content ... "being mobilized by CCP" that was harming "young people's health".
The fact that none of this was put forward by the lawyers makes me think the tiktok lawyers were incompetent. I went through the testimonies given and it was DAMMMMMNNNN weak. Three issues were identified by me: The Bill suddenly declares "non-aligned countries" to be "foreign adversaries" but there is no declared war so how can they be adversaries already; The Bill declares anyone facilitating the company including through the transfer of communication is in violation of the bill but that is a freedom of speech issue which they did not bring up but instead brought the ban as a FoS issue; The Bill labels TikTok and ByteDance as companies to be sold [to an aligned state] or banned entirely but that is the only company being single-handedly called out and I don't know how to say this but that sounds like some form of discrimination and unsubstantiated claim of threat. They could have done a better job at the SCOTUS.
[1] https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
The next Supreme Court decision will be them deciding if disagreeing with the TikTok decision is sufficient grounds for being censored.
Public disagreement with the TikTok decision could lead to legislative pressure, which would add support to the pressure campaigns of Chinese lobbyists and diplomats, or of other organizations that are funded or donated to by Chinese people or people of Chinese descent. This could either result in new legislation being passed that nullifies the ban, or pressure the Executive into failing to enforce the ban.
Either of those outcomes would, in effect, allow the user data of Americans to be accessed by the government of China. Disagreement with the TikTok ban would in and of itself aid America's adversaries.
Besides, disagreement with it implies that America unduly restricts speech, when we're supposed to hate China because China unduly restricts speech. That's a clear case of creating a false equivalence in order to foment discord, which again is material support to China's goal to monitor American's communications and corrupt the minds of America's children.
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.
Everybody already moved to red book and are starting to recognize that the US is just an aging colonialist with nothing to offer the future
https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/hXe9HsWslW
The GenZ folks (including my kids) that I interact with on a day-to-day basis are much happier on that application and they’re starting to realize that the US is not what it pretends to be
That doesn’t mean any place is better (though possible) it simply means people started finally realizing the truth of the United States
This is great news!
The key issue here now is: The future, freedom, international policy etc of you US guys no longer depends on democratic structures in ANY way whatsoever.
Who pays Trump most, wins. Who does what Musk wants, wins.
From what I know, there is no second Oligarch-run corrupt country that would come close to this. This is worse than China and Russia combined.
Sorry, not meant to bash our US HN friends at all, just an observation from another western country targeted by MuskTrump that has yet to follow the US lead (which they will), so we still have some time left to be in shock and awe about what is going on on your side of the pond for a while.
FFS.
It's a bit disingenuous for Mark Zuckerberg to go on Joe Rogan and say that the Biden administration is anti Meta/anti America, when congress passed this bill to shut down TikTok.
I don't love that TikTok is run by a Chinese company (thus giving way too much control to the Chinese government), but Meta builds such garbage experiences in their apps. There really needs to be a real competitor to Meta.
This is just a roundabout way for Trump to get bribed
Free speech.
America has the right to ban since china banned all American tech companies from operating in their nation but this means America could never ever talk about freedom of doing business bs
NBC is delusional, thinking Trump who ran on a law and order platform is going to disregard the law.
I have mixed feelings. The Supreme Court did the right thing; the democratically elected government did decide upon a ban, so it should likely continue as was made law.
I am not sure that banning forms of media feels good. The point of free speech is to let everyone say their thing and for people to be smart enough to ignore the bad ideas.
I am not sure the general population of vertical video viewers does part 2, however, so I get the desire to force people to not engage. The algorithmic boosting has had lots of weird side effects; increased political polarization, people being constantly inundated with rage bait, and even "trends" that get kids to vandalize their school. (My favorite was when I asked why ice cream is locked up in the freezer at CVS. Apparently it was a TikTok "trend" to lick the ice cream and then put it back in the freezer, so now an employee has to escort you from the ice cream area to the cashier to ensure that you pay for it before you lick it. Not sure how much of this actually happened versus how companies were afraid of it happening, however.)
With all this in mind, it's unclear to me whether TikTok is uniquely responsible for this effect. I feel like Instagram, YouTube Shorts, etc. have the potential to cause the exact same problems (and perhaps already have). Even the legacy media is not guilt free here. Traditional newspapers ownership has changed over the years and they all seem pretty biased in a certain direction, and I am pretty sure that the local news is responsible for a lot of reactionary poor public policy making. (Do I dare mention that I think the whole New Jersy drone thing was just mass hysteria?)
Now, everyone is saying that regulating TikTok has nothing to do with its content, but I'm pretty sure that's just a flat-out lie. First, Trump wanted to ban it because everything on there was negative towards him. Then right-wing influencers got a lot of traction on the platform, and suddenly Democrats want to ban it and Trump wants to reverse the ban. It's pretty transparent what's going on there.
I agree with the other comments that say if data collection is the issue, we shouldn't let American companies do it either. That seems very fair to regulate and I'm in favor of that.
The best effect will be someone with a lot of money and media reach standing up against app stores. I can live with that.
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.
Wasn't the idea Trump's in the first place?
Not hard to see how this will play out.
Trump will get a bribe from them and it will be opened.
I mean this won't happen. The TikTok CEO is invited to Trump's inauguration.
The silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media.
It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboarding dog.
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