There seems to be no denial that the Chinese gov't is mining data on all US users of TikTok. Similarly, there seems to be no dispute the Chinese have been using TikTok for disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda. The Chinese gov't doesn't have to own the site if they can get all the data and can inject mal-info into the US, do they?
The following sites are banned in China:
Gmail,
Google,
YouTube,
Facebook,
Instagram,
Twitter, and, wait for it . . . . . TikTok.
I would ban TikTok on the basis of it being a Chinese intel data mining operation and a channel to inject disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda into the US and specifically into the heads of our youth.
Freedom is a blessing conveyed upon individuals, not governments.
The Chinese version is heavily censored the US is not.
Also this comment on X
The fact that ByteDance would shut down TikTok rather than earn (at least) tens of billions of dollars from a sale gives up the game here.
ByteDance is not a normal tech company driven by profit motives. It’s a tool of a hostile foreign power.
It’s gotta go.
Communism is a religion. Hence you get the True Communism has never been tried or True Socialism has never been tried excuse for all of its failures. You can't convince people they belong to the "wrong religion" or their religion doesn't work.
The three greatest monsters of the 20th Century (ignoring William J. Ruckelshaus) were in order Mao, Stalin, Hitler. Win, Place and Show. Two of the three were Communists. The mini-monsters like Pol Pot and Castro were also Communists. Yes there were others (Franco, etc.) who were just dictators but compared to most of the communist ones they were small potatoes. Content to kill their own people most of the time. See the Catholic-Protestant wars or the Christian-Islamic wars. Or the Islamic-Hindu wars.
They didn't kill that many people obtaining power. The real killings began after they got it.
Hate is a form of envy. They hate America for succeeding where they didn't so they hate it.
They don't want to overthrow America, they want to control it. If the USSR had succeeded and America had become communist it would have been a rival just as China did. The USSR loved China, as long as China did what the USSR said. When Mao went off on his own, well that was different. China and the USSR are all about controlling the countries around them, not necessarily ruling them. So is the US in a way, so were\are all great powers. Britain, France, Rome, Greece, Egypt, goes way way back.
The problem isn't that the pols and the business leaders can be brought or bribed. It's that it is so cheap to do it.
China and the others think long term. The US doesn't. Watch Flags of our Fathers. The US was having trouble selling War Bonds in 44, maybe 43.
Apparently China would rather shut down TikTok than sell it.
We should strongly consider the possibility that the reason for this is: because they don't have time to remove all the computer code that would reveal what they have been doing with the app.
The new owner would see what they have been doing and they can't allow that. It would be better to throw it away than allow that evidence to come out.
Following on the Mr. Minch's comment, there a suggestion to regulate TikTok like China regulates US Tech platforms... that is a framing strictly on trade reciprocity. (I would H/T if I remembered who made the suggestion) Of course they won't, but instead of banning via 'disinformation' we simply present it as enforcing fair trade....
TikTok is not a startup. It's a firmly established cyber-social medium. American investors are owners in the sense that they have profit. And risk. This does not make TikTok a private company, except perhaps in the sense of Mussolini's Italy.
TikTok is undoubtedly a wholly controlled subsidiary of the CCP: Those people who planted spy chips on giant cranes they sold us to use in our ports. Those people who lied about TikTok data sharing the first time they testified to Congress. Those people whose Huawei telecomm gear we're supposed to have ripped out. Those people of the giant 'weather' balloon. Those people who came up with the US citizen 'data protection' Texas Project headfake.
What difference does it make if the tracking data on Americans is stored in Texas, if Xi can summon the data at will? And we know he can. They lied about that to the gweilo, too.
What difference does it make if the data is stored in Texas, if the algorithm still effectively propagandizes young Americans?
I get the problems with the Bill: Advancing censorship and attacking the First Amendment. Well, the FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department, etc., etc. are going to do that anyway. We can still leverage Congressional oversight and FOIA and the Second Amendment on them.
Weak tea? I'm afraid so, they're as dangerous to Constitutional Republicanism as the CCP. But a concerted effort can have an effect on our government. Not on China.
I'll take Andreessen on this one. Musk, Trump, Paul, Massie, Swalwell are all talking their Chinese influence/money book. This is not a first amendment issue. This is an easy call.
Rand Paul is not talking any Chinese influence or his "money book." He is a true libertarian and has never been a friend of China. But he's more libertarian than he is anti-China, which is why he's positioned this way. He's an excellent man.
Musk obviously has Chinese interests, but that has never stopped him from speaking on other issues. He knows that the day his companies will not do business in China is coming.
I can't/won't speak for Trump because it is my understanding that ByteDance has hired Kellyanne Conway as their lobbyist, and hence his softening on this policy. That's not good, and he'll soon go back to trashing them once he realizes that many of his constituents don't want TikTok around.
Rand Paul is a Republican. Sometimes he takes positions that some libertarians might agree with. Lots of times he takes moronic positions. E.g., there's no libertarian case to support Trump. These guys are all talking their book. Whether its business interests or campaign contributions. It's OK to admit. They are not angels. They're pols and businessmen. Jan f-ing Schakowsky voted against the bill. Yass, a guy with billions of ByteDance stock, is funding a lot of this pro-CCP BS. Nobody should want the CCP owning this company. TikTok is literally warping young peoples minds. F*** them all.
It was amazing to me the demands Lemon made......amazing. Then the whining. If that's not a sign of total entitlement (I am an educated black gay male) I don't know what is.
You seem to not like right of center people. I read your comments all the time, and I try to read them in good faith, with a response in the same manner.
Why do you not like conservative people or like-minded ones? Or am I wrong in that assumption?
I’m a right of center classical liberal. I have no time for illiberal populism, whether from the left or right. I’ve never voted for a D for president and thankfully as an IL resident I won’t have to this year.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union devoted extensive resources to jamming American and other western radio transmissions. The US never did, and I believe never contemplated, jamming Soviet transmissions to the US.
US & Soviet cases weren't entirely parallel, since relatively few Americans had shortwave receivers and they were apparently more common in Russia...but even if shortwave had become much more popular in the US, or if the Russians had been able to transmit to the US on the AM broadcast ban, it seems unlikely that the US government would have attempted to interfere with the signals. Maybe a matter of societal self-confidence, then and now.
Not a perfect analogy...social media permits gathering data on audience members, whereas radio is a one-way medium....but the totalitarian precedent still makes me nervous.
The biggest concern I have with this is the language in the bill that implies that the President could have the power to shut down websites, if I read the rebuttal on Twitter correctly by your friend. For that occurrence to take place in an election year is very concerning to me.
With all the conversation about shutting down tiktok for the past three quarters of a decade, for the bill to come out now, months before the election, I smell a rat.... And I am in favor of shutting down tick tock in the United States and I am in favor of the "Chicago Way"(thank you Sean Connery)where if the Chinese try to screw us over economically or strategically once, then we dish it back to them five fold. I just question the timing of this.
People are starting to figure out social media can be toxic. In another 20 years we will have figured out it's about as healthy as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
It’s a good thing we have smart people like Sundance to explain this crap to us:
“Ultimately, if you stand back and look at what is being done, you see the concern of the U.S. government is not data collection, its information control.
The TikTok ban, authorized by a duplicious Legislative branch, is expanding the ability of the Executive branch to control information. Just as The Patriot Act was not about targeting terrorism, but really about domestic surveillance; so too is the TikTok ban not about foreign data collection, it’s about information control.”
Probably the mainreason this is happening is that all American-owned social media has a back door for the American security state and probably tik tok doesn’t. The Deep State wants their back door. And this will bring them into the stable. The other issue swimming in the background here is that conservative influencers on tik tok seem to be making headway with youth opinion. I heard about a poll something to the effect that Biden and Democrats are very unpopular with youth. The Democrats’ Deep State cannot let this go unchallenged. And the bought and paid for stupid Republicans get duped again. For Trumps part, I understand one of his major donors is a major investor in tik tok so take that for what it’s worth.
1) Couldn't we just lock a bunch of the offensive private data? Not allow it to go through the Apple or Google stores unless it stops getting so nosey?
2) David Sacks was doing a lecture yesterday, making the very good point that our relationship with Ukraine and Russia changed a huge amount after the Democrats wanted to impeach Trump over Ukranian issues. Something budged there, that probably didn't need to budge. I keep wondering what budged with China? Trade was going along really well, as were improvements to intellectual property protection. Then very quickly (even before the COVID hysteria) things went south. Can't put my finger on it, but maybe around the time of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, we lost a lot in terms of diplomacy.
Restrictions on foreign ownership of US companies, who engage in a vital interest (defined how?), is an important discussion to have. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
The fact that US companies operating in China behave in compliance with the authoritarian Chinese govt demonstrates the "slippery slope" argument that is often raised when objections to restrictions (as here) are proposed, i.e., dangerous to impose such restrictions because of where it leads.
Vital interest will be a moving target as opinions and perspectives change over time. As a starting point, would not defense-related industries and communication/media services fall under that umbrella?
I am also VERY queasy about governments deciding who can own what in the US. For example, China owns Smithfield. Assume we go to war with China. What happens to the pork Smithfield produces? The US could simple shut down export of it. This is why it is crucial for a lot of the stuff that is vital to US defense that is made in China to come back to North America.
Exactly. I don't think it makes any sense to have farm land or food (e.g., Smithfield) in foreign hands/control. The US has offloaded 90% (some estimates higher) of vital pharma production to China. How is that benign?
China controls/produces a higher share of so-called rare earth metals/minerals vital for the supposed energy transition than does OPEC dominate crude oil. How does replacing OPEC exposure with an even greater exposure to Chinese supplies of rare earths make any sense?
The US eventually managed the OPEC exposure risk with domestic production--which the US does not have regarding rare earths.
Bytedance, the owner of TikTok, has an internal communist party committee. They are not there to enjoy funny videos. Bytedance did plan to go public in 2021 on either Nasdaq or the NYSE. Chinese regulators nixed the IPO. A better way to resolve this situation is to require Bytedance to IPO no later than Dec 31, 2025 in an American market. If Bytedance doesn't want to IPO, they can sell TikTok. However, if they do IPO they would be subject to the rules of the exchange and American laws on transparency and accountability.
There seems to be no denial that the Chinese gov't is mining data on all US users of TikTok. Similarly, there seems to be no dispute the Chinese have been using TikTok for disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda. The Chinese gov't doesn't have to own the site if they can get all the data and can inject mal-info into the US, do they?
The following sites are banned in China:
Gmail,
Google,
YouTube,
Facebook,
Instagram,
Twitter, and, wait for it . . . . . TikTok.
I would ban TikTok on the basis of it being a Chinese intel data mining operation and a channel to inject disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda into the US and specifically into the heads of our youth.
Freedom is a blessing conveyed upon individuals, not governments.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I think the problem is when Congress passes a law, language can be broad. Would The Federalist Society become an enemy of the State?
Generally, I default to the position of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie but your rebuttal changed my mind, JLM.
This bill passes and becomes law. How soon before the Biden Administration shuts down Twitter? Rumble?
There is an interesting post on Instapundit
SPINACH FOR CHINESE KIDS, OPIUM FOR AMERICANS:
The Chinese version is heavily censored the US is not.
Also this comment on X
The fact that ByteDance would shut down TikTok rather than earn (at least) tens of billions of dollars from a sale gives up the game here.
ByteDance is not a normal tech company driven by profit motives. It’s a tool of a hostile foreign power.
It’s gotta go.
Communism is a religion. Hence you get the True Communism has never been tried or True Socialism has never been tried excuse for all of its failures. You can't convince people they belong to the "wrong religion" or their religion doesn't work.
The three greatest monsters of the 20th Century (ignoring William J. Ruckelshaus) were in order Mao, Stalin, Hitler. Win, Place and Show. Two of the three were Communists. The mini-monsters like Pol Pot and Castro were also Communists. Yes there were others (Franco, etc.) who were just dictators but compared to most of the communist ones they were small potatoes. Content to kill their own people most of the time. See the Catholic-Protestant wars or the Christian-Islamic wars. Or the Islamic-Hindu wars.
They didn't kill that many people obtaining power. The real killings began after they got it.
Hate is a form of envy. They hate America for succeeding where they didn't so they hate it.
They don't want to overthrow America, they want to control it. If the USSR had succeeded and America had become communist it would have been a rival just as China did. The USSR loved China, as long as China did what the USSR said. When Mao went off on his own, well that was different. China and the USSR are all about controlling the countries around them, not necessarily ruling them. So is the US in a way, so were\are all great powers. Britain, France, Rome, Greece, Egypt, goes way way back.
The problem isn't that the pols and the business leaders can be brought or bribed. It's that it is so cheap to do it.
China and the others think long term. The US doesn't. Watch Flags of our Fathers. The US was having trouble selling War Bonds in 44, maybe 43.
They are elephants, we are fruit flys.
I agree more with you than you do with yourself.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
The focus on this company tells me that the intelligence powers that be know something we don't.
Overcoming the hard partisan divide is a pretty monumental feat, so there is something very clearly going on.
Apparently China would rather shut down TikTok than sell it.
We should strongly consider the possibility that the reason for this is: because they don't have time to remove all the computer code that would reveal what they have been doing with the app.
The new owner would see what they have been doing and they can't allow that. It would be better to throw it away than allow that evidence to come out.
This exact thought occurred to me. I'm thinking there is a lot here they don't want us to know.
Regardless, throwing away tens of billions (hundreds?) because of "principle" is not it. They are going to remove the evidence and the tools.
Following on the Mr. Minch's comment, there a suggestion to regulate TikTok like China regulates US Tech platforms... that is a framing strictly on trade reciprocity. (I would H/T if I remembered who made the suggestion) Of course they won't, but instead of banning via 'disinformation' we simply present it as enforcing fair trade....
TikTok is not a startup. It's a firmly established cyber-social medium. American investors are owners in the sense that they have profit. And risk. This does not make TikTok a private company, except perhaps in the sense of Mussolini's Italy.
TikTok is undoubtedly a wholly controlled subsidiary of the CCP: Those people who planted spy chips on giant cranes they sold us to use in our ports. Those people who lied about TikTok data sharing the first time they testified to Congress. Those people whose Huawei telecomm gear we're supposed to have ripped out. Those people of the giant 'weather' balloon. Those people who came up with the US citizen 'data protection' Texas Project headfake.
What difference does it make if the tracking data on Americans is stored in Texas, if Xi can summon the data at will? And we know he can. They lied about that to the gweilo, too.
What difference does it make if the data is stored in Texas, if the algorithm still effectively propagandizes young Americans?
I get the problems with the Bill: Advancing censorship and attacking the First Amendment. Well, the FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department, etc., etc. are going to do that anyway. We can still leverage Congressional oversight and FOIA and the Second Amendment on them.
Weak tea? I'm afraid so, they're as dangerous to Constitutional Republicanism as the CCP. But a concerted effort can have an effect on our government. Not on China.
The proposal is a spin-off or sell-off. A ban only comes if the CCP refuses to relinquish control.
Social media and phones poison the minds of kids. Literally. Independent of TikTok ownership.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/
I'll take Andreessen on this one. Musk, Trump, Paul, Massie, Swalwell are all talking their Chinese influence/money book. This is not a first amendment issue. This is an easy call.
Rand Paul is not talking any Chinese influence or his "money book." He is a true libertarian and has never been a friend of China. But he's more libertarian than he is anti-China, which is why he's positioned this way. He's an excellent man.
Musk obviously has Chinese interests, but that has never stopped him from speaking on other issues. He knows that the day his companies will not do business in China is coming.
I can't/won't speak for Trump because it is my understanding that ByteDance has hired Kellyanne Conway as their lobbyist, and hence his softening on this policy. That's not good, and he'll soon go back to trashing them once he realizes that many of his constituents don't want TikTok around.
Rand Paul is a Republican. Sometimes he takes positions that some libertarians might agree with. Lots of times he takes moronic positions. E.g., there's no libertarian case to support Trump. These guys are all talking their book. Whether its business interests or campaign contributions. It's OK to admit. They are not angels. They're pols and businessmen. Jan f-ing Schakowsky voted against the bill. Yass, a guy with billions of ByteDance stock, is funding a lot of this pro-CCP BS. Nobody should want the CCP owning this company. TikTok is literally warping young peoples minds. F*** them all.
Yass is a libertarian for what its worth
Don Lemon is a ding dong. And is being cancelled by vain, sensitive, free-speech phony Elon.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/breaking-don-lemon-says-elon-musk-canceled-his-deal-with-x-after-their-interview/
It was amazing to me the demands Lemon made......amazing. Then the whining. If that's not a sign of total entitlement (I am an educated black gay male) I don't know what is.
Another sign of Elon phoniness: he won't get rid of the '░P░U░*░*░Y░ ░I░N░ ░B░I░O░' accounts.
Elon does not run every single aspect of the company at all times.
Too busy posting memes and checking out bios.
You seem to not like right of center people. I read your comments all the time, and I try to read them in good faith, with a response in the same manner.
Why do you not like conservative people or like-minded ones? Or am I wrong in that assumption?
I’m a right of center classical liberal. I have no time for illiberal populism, whether from the left or right. I’ve never voted for a D for president and thankfully as an IL resident I won’t have to this year.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union devoted extensive resources to jamming American and other western radio transmissions. The US never did, and I believe never contemplated, jamming Soviet transmissions to the US.
US & Soviet cases weren't entirely parallel, since relatively few Americans had shortwave receivers and they were apparently more common in Russia...but even if shortwave had become much more popular in the US, or if the Russians had been able to transmit to the US on the AM broadcast ban, it seems unlikely that the US government would have attempted to interfere with the signals. Maybe a matter of societal self-confidence, then and now.
Not a perfect analogy...social media permits gathering data on audience members, whereas radio is a one-way medium....but the totalitarian precedent still makes me nervous.
The biggest concern I have with this is the language in the bill that implies that the President could have the power to shut down websites, if I read the rebuttal on Twitter correctly by your friend. For that occurrence to take place in an election year is very concerning to me.
With all the conversation about shutting down tiktok for the past three quarters of a decade, for the bill to come out now, months before the election, I smell a rat.... And I am in favor of shutting down tick tock in the United States and I am in favor of the "Chicago Way"(thank you Sean Connery)where if the Chinese try to screw us over economically or strategically once, then we dish it back to them five fold. I just question the timing of this.
I agree with that.
People are starting to figure out social media can be toxic. In another 20 years we will have figured out it's about as healthy as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
It’s a good thing we have smart people like Sundance to explain this crap to us:
“Ultimately, if you stand back and look at what is being done, you see the concern of the U.S. government is not data collection, its information control.
The TikTok ban, authorized by a duplicious Legislative branch, is expanding the ability of the Executive branch to control information. Just as The Patriot Act was not about targeting terrorism, but really about domestic surveillance; so too is the TikTok ban not about foreign data collection, it’s about information control.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/03/12/hr7521-the-tiktok-ban-law-as-written-is-not-about-banning-tiktok-its-about-information-control-pdf-included/
Probably the mainreason this is happening is that all American-owned social media has a back door for the American security state and probably tik tok doesn’t. The Deep State wants their back door. And this will bring them into the stable. The other issue swimming in the background here is that conservative influencers on tik tok seem to be making headway with youth opinion. I heard about a poll something to the effect that Biden and Democrats are very unpopular with youth. The Democrats’ Deep State cannot let this go unchallenged. And the bought and paid for stupid Republicans get duped again. For Trumps part, I understand one of his major donors is a major investor in tik tok so take that for what it’s worth.
1) Couldn't we just lock a bunch of the offensive private data? Not allow it to go through the Apple or Google stores unless it stops getting so nosey?
2) David Sacks was doing a lecture yesterday, making the very good point that our relationship with Ukraine and Russia changed a huge amount after the Democrats wanted to impeach Trump over Ukranian issues. Something budged there, that probably didn't need to budge. I keep wondering what budged with China? Trade was going along really well, as were improvements to intellectual property protection. Then very quickly (even before the COVID hysteria) things went south. Can't put my finger on it, but maybe around the time of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, we lost a lot in terms of diplomacy.
Restrictions on foreign ownership of US companies, who engage in a vital interest (defined how?), is an important discussion to have. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
The fact that US companies operating in China behave in compliance with the authoritarian Chinese govt demonstrates the "slippery slope" argument that is often raised when objections to restrictions (as here) are proposed, i.e., dangerous to impose such restrictions because of where it leads.
Vital interest will be a moving target as opinions and perspectives change over time. As a starting point, would not defense-related industries and communication/media services fall under that umbrella?
Obviously, this is a longer discussion.
I am also VERY queasy about governments deciding who can own what in the US. For example, China owns Smithfield. Assume we go to war with China. What happens to the pork Smithfield produces? The US could simple shut down export of it. This is why it is crucial for a lot of the stuff that is vital to US defense that is made in China to come back to North America.
Exactly. I don't think it makes any sense to have farm land or food (e.g., Smithfield) in foreign hands/control. The US has offloaded 90% (some estimates higher) of vital pharma production to China. How is that benign?
China controls/produces a higher share of so-called rare earth metals/minerals vital for the supposed energy transition than does OPEC dominate crude oil. How does replacing OPEC exposure with an even greater exposure to Chinese supplies of rare earths make any sense?
The US eventually managed the OPEC exposure risk with domestic production--which the US does not have regarding rare earths.
On that we agree.
Bytedance, the owner of TikTok, has an internal communist party committee. They are not there to enjoy funny videos. Bytedance did plan to go public in 2021 on either Nasdaq or the NYSE. Chinese regulators nixed the IPO. A better way to resolve this situation is to require Bytedance to IPO no later than Dec 31, 2025 in an American market. If Bytedance doesn't want to IPO, they can sell TikTok. However, if they do IPO they would be subject to the rules of the exchange and American laws on transparency and accountability.