TikTok ready to “move to the courts” to prevent ban in US
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Read the bill in full: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text
It applies to any app whose company is majority-owned by China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
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And also specifically to TikTok. Because people don't like what may be said at some point in the future and because Mnuchin wants a piece.
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That part can be removed on the grounds that it's a bill of attainder and it still applies to Tiktok.
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"Look, we're not taking your guns. You just have to sell them off, or throw them away. Look, we're not forcing you to sell them! Also, you're going to be selling them to Dick's Sporting Goods for $10 - we worked that out already. Again, If you choose - we're not forcing you to sell them after all."
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Anyway, I'm maybe 50% convinced that the reason congress is pressing so hard on this is because people who spend a lot of time on TikTok tend to not support Israel's invasion of Palestine. And that they think the only reason kids could possibly have that opinion is because of a Chinese propaganda campaign, rather than the fact that they can see raw footage of the war.
But kids being more liberal and preferring international peace shouldn't be that surprising. Especially for the generation that literally started out as hippies of all groups, protesting the wars they had to live through.
But kids being more liberal and preferring international peace shouldn't be that surprising. Especially for the generation that literally started out as hippies of all groups, protesting the wars they had to live through.
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Yeah, me too, get in line.
You're missing the point. From the Chinese regulator's perspective, if you're not registered to operate in China, then you don't exist and you can't ban what doesn't exist. Chinese internet is "the internet." If you make a hole visible, then it will be conveniently erased. Nor is it just American social media, it's a LOT more (300,000+ domains), and you have a whole generation of Chinese growing up with a largely Chinese-only internet.
It's not all doom and gloom, as SARs and FTZs fall under different regulatory umbrellas, and if you're still established, and operating then you have impact and influence (even if you have onerous regulations placed on you). However by bailing on the Chinese market, the western companies have forfeited any potential influence no matter how small. This is why I'm OK with Apple still having a significant presence there as it acts as a temper against more impulsive, reactive policies. Purely domestic companies are too easy to push around.
This is essentially what the newer Chinese tech companies do now. Setup a foreign holding company, transfer the ownership of the Chinese entity as a subsidiary, and then establish a global subsidiary as a peer corporation to the Chinese one. This allows them to segment off the Chinese business (where their growth would be hindered by operating under a solely Chinese operating paradigm), and grow globally without the constraints of Chinese regulation.
This is also why I don't like the TikTok legislation. It basically pushes the US further down the path of the above and we already have one Chinese Internet. Don't need another one.
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I don't actually care if it's state-owned by a functional democracy, because it means it's publicly owned. State-owned by an authoritarian dictatorship isn't public, but a concentration of power in one person. The bill doesn't say it has to be private, as long as it's not owned by a foreign adversary. Publicly owned by the US, foreign allies, foreign neutral countries, or private, fine. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, or other state actors who are currently funding cyber attacks against our IT infrastructure, no.
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Right. And then I pointed out such political targets (a) can simply not use TikTok and (b) already explicitly need to employ basic online security procedures to avoid exposure through the practices of every other social media site.
At that point, you moved the goal posts to assert the political targets we're talking about are actually random kids who've lived in America their whole lives, have no idea of potential online threats they face, and would just be cluelessly using TikTok due to peer pressure.
Now you want to move the goal posts back to where they started? Typical.
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No. That's one of the things that makes this legislation so completely disingenuous.
This is a "solution" that goes against tons of American core principles while not even pretending to address the actual dangers lawmakers are frothing at the mouth about.
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Let me spell it out to you more clearly. Political targets include Americans of Taiwanese, Uyghur, Tibetan, and Chinese descent (political dissidents). Family and friends of these political targets might not understand the risks and use TikTok, because they are kids (Asian Americans can have US-born children who live in their home!) or other adults who don't care (Asian Americans can have interracial relationships, friendships, landlords, bosses, and coworkers!).
Edit: It looks like I misinterpreted your earlier question about why US-born kids who lived in the US for their whole lives to be asking why young Asian American kids would be targets. But you were asking why random white American kids would be targets, because you thought US-born kids cannot be Asian Americans or the family of Asian American political targets. It looks like I'm changing the topic to you because of your own racist assumption that US-born kids and Asian Americans are mutually exclusive.
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China has proven that they can target these people most effectively. If they would insist on using only good soft power tool they have at their disposal.
Seriously, there is zero evidence this is happening. No one defends China ffs here. But this ownership dance was just a pain in someone's political but, but has zero relevance to security.
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This is a bit of crux of it. China is security concern. No doubt. And USA and UK being all you can eat buffet for people with tons of money eventually undermines them. Using such laws as duct tape not only feels bizzare, it just does not work.
However, people can stop pretending this is not about Palestine. You can say it is complicated all you like, kids utterly hate violence. And Netanjahu is the worst advocate for Israel....ever. That is why this is jarring. No, China is not pushing pro Palestine views on their platform. Kids have been pro Palestine all my life. For me, situation is complicated, but if we just take sheer human tragedy into account, there is very little room for misunderstanding this.
Real danger for USA comes from within. Duct taping it with bizzare laws like this is waste of energy.
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You are making the questionable cause fallacy.
People not on TikTok can see that it's wrong for Israel to deprive Gazans of life-sustaining resources like food and shelter, because independent news media exists. Banning TikTok isn't going to change that. But Congress isn't trying to ban TikTok. The ban happens only if TikTok's ownership stays with the CCP. If ByteDance divests TikTok, then TikTok will stay online, and users can freely discuss both the genocide of Uyghurs and the genocide of Gazans.
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They can already do that. It's heavily censored on Douyin, the one that the Chinese state actually cares about, but not TikTok.
Edit: Not to mention Meta keeps being in the news for censoring pro-Palestinian posts. And Twitter, well...
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On the question of data privacy, I noticed that the recent package comprises two laws: both similarly named:
- The "TikTok ban": Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
- The data privacy one: Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024.
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BTW:
If you hear people chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free…” here’s what it means:
This is a cry for Israel to not exist. It is calling for a Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – effectively erasing and destroying the entire Jewish state.
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You're either misrepresenting the position of others or you have a problem with comprehension.
If huffing paint (my analogue for most social media consumption - I only maintain a linkedin and this, really) from China is bad because of the composition containing lead ("muh algorithm-based manipulation") makes people stupider (be "misinformed" about the benevolence of the Chinese Communist Party/U.S. government), it follows that you should also ban American-sourced paint of identical composition from consumption as well.
Arguably more so, because domestic manufacture of "paint" will not exhaust itself after you flatten Shanghai with a Trident, and you don't want some idiot twitching when it's time to launch because he's huffed a bad batch from back home.
American lead paint is still lead paint. Arguing that Chinese-based lead paint is more worserest for huffing because "well they're commies" is inane.
The fact that "sell it to my buddy or please leave" is the demand as opposed to hammering Tiktok with "fuck you, banned on grounds of inciting sedition" should tell you what this really is: "oh shit, we have an uncontrolled media space that's affecting us, how do we manage to coopt or neutralize it without creating a crisis our PR firms can't extract us from?"
Now, if your argument is that the establishment needs a safe space on all media, then you need to be honest and instead pound the table on the Espionage Act being necessary to defeat the Central Powers, which at least aligns with the facts on a superficial basis.
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TikTok had censored an Afghan American talking about China's treatment of Uyghurs before.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/feroza-aziz-uyghur-muslims-china_n_5ddf7e4fe4b0d50f329ca1d3
Besides that, Uyghur Americans who know about China's persecution of Uyghurs* might be reluctant to use TikTok, given that China terrorizes naturalized Uyghur Americans in the US.
Yes, there is censorship. Google firing 50 employees related to protests against its cloud contract with Israel is a newsworthy tech story, but Ars has chosen not to cover any of the developments, which started April 16.
* Looks like I need to spell it out here in this forum. Young Uyghur American kids born in the US aren't born knowing about the dangers of the Chinese government. Political knowledge is learned at an appropriate age, not hereditary. Knowing about the persecution of Uyghurs would be required before discussing the topic on TikTok, but if you know and you're Uyghur, you might not want to use TikTok. This means that the topic of the repression of Uyghurs might be underrepresented in a ByteDance-owned TikTok.
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You are implying that it's a call for the genocide of Jews, when it's not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea
When Likud (the current Israeli government, Netanyahu's party) supporters think "from the river to the sea" is a call for genocide when said by Palestinians, it's right-wing projection of what Likud's manifesto means to them.
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You would have a point, if Israelis hadn't been using the same "From the river to the sea" chant for decades to advocate for eliminating Palestine. You are projecting what right-wing Israelis want to do to the Palestinians.
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What's inane is thinking that the PRC, when they invade Taiwan, won't use every method at their disposal to prevent the US from helping our ally.
Including the direct line from Xi to 170 million Americans' phones.
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One thing I think is novel is that despite the conversation here, TikTok isn't actually suing based on its own First Amendment rights, which would be a significantly stronger case (if they had those rights). That suggests to me that they know they either don't have those rights, or that they have a limited subset of those rights which they know aren't sufficient for them to prevail. Hence, suing on behalf of the users' First Amendment rights.
But what I wonder is do they even have standing to do so? The First Amendment provides (as they say) freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. No one who is currently on Tiktok is going to be prevented from saying anything they want (within established First Amendment grounds). There's already a precedent--Free Speech Zones--where you are allowed to say what you want over here but not over there.
I'm not honestly sure how they can prevail in this; not only are the rules for foreign corporations (even corporations owned by friendly countries, like AUS/CAN/NZ/UK) different from those for domestic corporations, they're not even being prevented from operating in the USA if they're willing to divest. Sure, they may not be willing, but "divest or cease doing business" is legally different than "cease doing business", just like "divulge your password or go to jail" is legally different than "go directly to jail".
At best it seems to me like they have a very strong argument for getting the explicit mentions of their company and parent company stricken from the law, but severability will likely allow the rest of the law to stand, and the existing criteria looks like it would fit them anyway (which, of course, means it was stupid to put them in by name in the first place.)
And literally all of this is before Senators start dancing around on tables screaming "National Security!" which as we all know is the root password for overriding the US Constitution. Once National Security is mentioned, all reason and law goes out the window, rendering pretty much all of this irrelevant. National Security was used to justify the Red Scare and Japanese Internment Camps, it can most definitely force TikTok to sell or GTFO, whether it's right or not.
But what I wonder is do they even have standing to do so? The First Amendment provides (as they say) freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. No one who is currently on Tiktok is going to be prevented from saying anything they want (within established First Amendment grounds). There's already a precedent--Free Speech Zones--where you are allowed to say what you want over here but not over there.
I'm not honestly sure how they can prevail in this; not only are the rules for foreign corporations (even corporations owned by friendly countries, like AUS/CAN/NZ/UK) different from those for domestic corporations, they're not even being prevented from operating in the USA if they're willing to divest. Sure, they may not be willing, but "divest or cease doing business" is legally different than "cease doing business", just like "divulge your password or go to jail" is legally different than "go directly to jail".
At best it seems to me like they have a very strong argument for getting the explicit mentions of their company and parent company stricken from the law, but severability will likely allow the rest of the law to stand, and the existing criteria looks like it would fit them anyway (which, of course, means it was stupid to put them in by name in the first place.)
And literally all of this is before Senators start dancing around on tables screaming "National Security!" which as we all know is the root password for overriding the US Constitution. Once National Security is mentioned, all reason and law goes out the window, rendering pretty much all of this irrelevant. National Security was used to justify the Red Scare and Japanese Internment Camps, it can most definitely force TikTok to sell or GTFO, whether it's right or not.
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Last I checked, no part of the Constitution says "the right of hostile foreign countries to own property in the US shall not be infringed".
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This is hardly the first time. Foreign ownership of broadcast media is already banned.
You (and everyone else here) seriously need to stop comparing this to crime or the justice system. A hostile state acting in a malicious way to undermine the foreign policy of another state is not crime. It is an act of war. The rules are different. There's no presumption of innocence or burden of proof.
Of course they will, and they would even more so if we naively let them!!!
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"No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
I'll leave where that language is specifically located to your vast Constitutional expertise.
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Let's revisit this once Congress passes it, the President executes it, and the courts uphold it.
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None of the bills keeps the MSS (Chinese CIA/FBI) from hiring another Singaporean to contact Facebook with a big ad buy saying "Military-Industrial Complex bad! Taiwan protection = imperialism! China smol bean uwu"
Since we're doing this, I'm also curious as to when do we start to imprison Mandarin-speaking, Chinese-descent persons in the U.S. without trial?
After all, they have an actual, documented tendency to flee "back home" with a head full of classified information whereas before we just imprisoned people on being a suspicious ethnicity.
Perhaps you have some talking point lined up about "Dual loyalties" when that happens? Or will we appropriate from the authoritarian "left" this time and call them "rootless cosmopolitians" or "counter-revolutionary intellectuals"?
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If you throw in just a couple more red herrings, you'd almost have a valid argument here...
Oh, wait, that's not how logic works. Address the point in question, if you can.
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Do you think these reports of the Chinese government hacking into US infrastructure are fake news?
https://meincmagazine.com/security/20...sh-major-beachheads-inside-us-infrastructure/
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Oh no, not at all, I'm aware that the threat from China is real. I'm just saying once National Security is invoked, it is completely irrelevant whether there's a real threat or not.
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Ok come on. What is it with so many people that can't tell the difference between "let's not murder Palestinians indiscriminately" and "we should genocide Isreal"? They're not the same thing. They're not even close.
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I note you also didn't address any of my points. Particularly the one where I asked: "What about these bills keeps a third-party national from being hired by the Chinese to flood Facebook with ad-buys?"
There's a Clancy quote about "The most likely MSS agent was the blonde nurse from Stockholm. Precisely because she was the last person you'd expect to work for the Chinese" somewhere I can't recall, but I somehow doubt they've changed their practices much in 20 years.
Don't play the fallacy game. It's not a red herring to give you an offramp to consider what you are saying. It's also not a red herring to extend the logic of what you're vocally supporting to the point where it gets uncomfortable for you. That you seem to have a problem with where it leads is your problem, not mine.
Pick your beliefs better. Consider what you believe instead of espousing platitudes. We don't have commissars, yet.
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ByteDance owns TikTok, not the CCP.
TikTok has taken steps to protect US user data: https://usds.tiktok.com/what-is-usds/ You can believe them or not, your choice.
Honestly I'd rather TikTok be owned by ByteDance than a megalomaniac US billionaire. But I also don't use it. I just want actual concrete examples of how TikTok is systemically worse than any US social media company, instead of hypotheticals that haven't happened, or hand wringing over the CCP.
We manufacture so much shit in China that the CCP could really mess up our, and the world's, economy if they chose, where is the outrage about that?
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Holy shit. When does Fox News get confiscated for being owned by an Australian fascist asshole? Why doesn't this apply to the Saudis either? It's not like they ever butchered an American journalist or funded terror resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans.
Then what we did and probably still do in Hong Kong is what? The hypocricy you display is astounding. I am not sure you realize just how bad you are making us look to the rest of the world. You are doing the Chinese' work for them!
You aren't letting them do anything by keeping them close. That's the only way you can exercise some degree of control. The idea that you can prevent Americans abroad from accessing TikTok by requiring ISPs to censor speech for you is a fascist fucking fantasy. You will have NO control whatsoever if this bill manages, somehow, to not be shredded by the SCOTUS.
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That there is a real national security threat is fucking relevant, because people here are arguing that it must be for some other reason than national security, like suppressing pro-Palestinian views, racism, eliminating business competition, or some unexplained government conspiracy.
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I was actually going to ask a similar question like that myself, but it turns out it's just not true. In 2017 the US approved 100% foreign ownership of multiple stations (also, coincidentally, by Australians).
Source: https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/20...0-foreign-ownership-of-us-broadcast-stations/
I'd imagine the rules are once again different for the four nations designated as Foreign Adversaries, but Australia isn't among that list.
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I am saying it's not relevant because the US has used National Security as a reason multiple times to abrogate inconvenient parts of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights regardless of whether or not there's an actual National Security threat that justifies that behavior or not. The truth of the threat is completely irrelevant to the government's ability to shut down what seems like practically anything they don't like in the name of National Security (see Trump v. Hawaii).
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Stop it. You know why.
Broadcast media?
You'll have to be a bit more specific about that.
Nobody cares that Americans are accessing it, only that the CCP is controlling it. That's why Bytedance can sell it, and things will continue as normal.
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This article is about "TikTok ready to “move to the courts” to prevent ban in US".
If you want to talk about Chinese spies buying ads on Meta, ok.... It's a free Internet, I guess. But don't expect anyone to engage with that.
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