https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/restrict-act-bill-tiktok-rcna73682 NBC coverage https://www.lawfareblog.com/two-new-bills-tiktok-and-beyond-data-act-and-restrict-act for somewhat positive discussion https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-raises-concerns-about-senate-bill-aimed-at-banning-tiktok ACLU is rather generically against it On one hand the government needs to protect against foreigners using technology to attack our country and institutions, and this seems to give us the authority to do so. On the other hand, we need protection against our own government using technology to attack our country, and this seems at first glance like another great big cudgel a la the PATRIOT Act that could be abused for partisan or personal reasons with little effective restraint. But I haven't read through the bill.
I'm not for this at all. People need to take individual responsibility for their own lives and parents need to be more responsible and get their kids off of social media. This will get abused by the government, no doubt. This will be like the Patriot Act and it'll never be sunsetted.
So the rest response to foreign government malfeasance is rolling the dice on "individual responsibility?" That seems unnecessarily risky, not to mention highly irresponsible of your own government.
I think this is less about protecting people from social media and more about protecting people from foreign data-mining . . . for now. [edit] It's also against foreign powers manipulating the algorithm to promote etc. etc. but the example given in the NBC article is a company looking at connection data to determine who in their company was a leaker.
We get data mined from domestic sources as well. It's happening all of the time. We all know this. So what? What are they getting from me that isn't already available? Bill Maher had a guy on last week talking about this. I don't know who the guy is and no he's not a Fox News host. Anyway, he was talking about this and was saying that this isn't something that the government can fix. I would post a video, but people around here don't like it when you post videos. I don't think it's a good idea.
Research on better migraine medication? Though I seriously doubt you're the target, more the end result after they've learnt how to deploy misinformation.
Can the government unilaterally fix anything by outlawing it? No. Well, maybe on occasion. Can the government reduce anything by outlawing it? Absolutely. And this is a good thing to reduce. But is this law going to reduce it, will it turn out to have loopholes to make it ineffective, will it turn out to be a huge loophole for our government to drive a partisan tank through in attempts to silence speech the people in power don't like? That's what I'm wondering. Agreed that domestic data mining is a concern too. That should be addressed. But that's for another law to tackle.
This is the US government's corporate handlers angry that another data mining company is making more profit and covering a larger share of the market than they are. This has nothing to do with protecting data, and is all about protecting profit for corporations in the US to mine as much data as possible without competitors. Also, fuck the US government and its increasing Sinophobia.
This seems dumb to me when any 12 year old with a vpn can get around it. If you're so eager hand your data over to the ChiComs or anyone else, go for it and live with the fallout.
My understanding is that both Apple and Google have decent policies on data privacy it is just that China has told them they can’t apply them to Tik-Tok.
Therefore nobody should ever listen to any of Maher's guests ever again because Ben Stein was wrong about something.
Hmm, he wanted Apple, Meta, and Amazon smashed by antitrust, now he thinks they're unbeatable. That's a helluva note.
I was wrong. He was on and they did talk about Tik Tok, but he was in favor of banning them. I believe the other guest or Maher himself made the case for parents being more responsible.
I am sure banning it will work. I see kids don't want drugs, porn, or anything else they can't get because it was banned by a bunch of boomers. Did Tik Tok Pay the US to make it the coolest app ever? because that is what banning it will do.
If the Chinese government wants marketing data on American consumers, they don't need TikTok ... all they have to do is buy it. A greater concern would be if there's some kind of malware hidden in the app, but that's more of an argument for banning its use on devices that anyone uses to access sensitive information for work (which I believe some government agencies have already done with their employees) than it is for banning it across the board.
About that That's so vaguely written that if one were to apply it to guns, even cap pistols would be illegal. The mass data harvesting done by all tech companies, not just TikTok, needs to be examined, but this isn't an appropriate way of doing it by any stretch of the imagination. Full text of the bill can be found here.
It's way worse if it's passed as written. Yuuuge fines and prison for using VPNs, asset forfeiture and Patriot Act-style invasive surveillance powers. That's a big fat NO SALE, buddy.
Exactly this. Anyone using a VPN would be at risk of up to $1,000,000 in fines and/or 20 years in prison, because the language is so broad, having a VPN could (and let's be honest, would) be seen as a method for circumventing the ban and making contact with a foreign application that is expressly forbidden in the bill which, again, is incredibly vague because neither TikTok or ByteDance is even mentioned in the bill. So it will be another "we'll know it when we see it" situation. Lovely.
And if this targeted all the other social media companies that do the same shit stateside, I'd be included to agree Nothing of value is lost with Tik Tok's banning, but they are hardly doing anything worse than the shit on FB or Twitter or anywhere else.
That's it, though, they're doing as other social media platforms have done, but the US isn't getting to dip its fingers into the data. Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, all of them have backdoors where the government can look at everything you've ever said and done online. TikTok resisted the US government's push for them to allow the same, and so now TikTok has to pay the piper.
