The national security issues with TikTok are directly tied to ownership. Lets not beat around the bush here. If you want a universal regulation on all social media, then the simplest one is that social media companies must have limited foreign ownership. We do this in lots of industries. Until 2012, we used to have foreign ownership restrictions on television media. A TV station couldn't have more than 25% ownership and even today the FCC has provisions that allow the FCC to block foreign owned stations if they are a national security threat. Social media at its core is still media and the government has a clear interest and precedent in regulating ownership. The industry that I work in (airlines) still has a 25% foreign ownership restriction for similar national security reasons. With that said, I'm pretty sure TikTok isn't getting banned. This is a game of chicken to force ByteDance to spin off TikTok and move the new entity to the US. But this hawing about free speech is absurd. We've regulated foreign media ownership for 100 years. The only reason why this wasn't banned already is because social media isn't classified as being under the FCC's purview so they couldn't regulate it like traditional forms of media.
I have no idea why the airline industry has that restriction but in any case if you want to apply FCC broadcast restrictions on social media and tech companies that distribute media its going to be problematic not just for Tik Tok. There are many social media platforms that are foreign based entirely. And that's the point, you can't create a rule just for one. If you want to restrict ownership to 25% across the board for all social media companies, then you will have an issue because these companies aren't broadcast companies that are market specific but rather global. So if every country applies that restriction social media just doesn't work anymore. No TikTok isn't getting banned, we all, know that. But even the talk of banning TikTok is harmful to democracy and shouldn't be brought up by either party. Instead, talk about national security and how to mitigate the risks. But the courts have already put a damper on it so I don't think this is going to put that much pressure on ByteDance. If the US gov't really thinks the Chinese is trying to dumb down American teens and turn them into bots through TikTok (somewhat ridiculous when you consider what Instagram and FB have already succeeded in doing), then fine, pass regulations that apply to ALL social media platforms, not just the one owned by China. I'm not defender of China by any means, but whenever gov't gets involved in things like this, it can often do more harm than good.
The real issue is that the US government can't force TikTok to hand over data. I'm sure Facebook is lobbying for this because they are seeing their business die with the older people who use it.
Bill seems like a horrible overreach. Not surprising. IIRC Hawley has been pitching a plain TikTok ban for a long time, so if that's what lawmakers actually wanted to do they could just latch on to that. But this isn't actually about a TikTok ban - it's about all the other ****.
This X1000 The fact is this is a major win for Facebook, and YouTube. Each of which have their "reels" feature that is essentially a TikTok ripoff. All of those influencers will just go to Instagram, or YouTube. All the while Facebook, and YouTube both elevate the worst of the worst anti-democratic propaganda driven from Russia, China, and the Republican party as well as sell ever bit of information about you that they can. They might not be owned technically by China or Russia, but they are just as nefarious if only for a quick buck. Don't even get me started on the hellscape that is Twitter. The reality is the US needs a data privacy bill like you mentioned, but tech bro's have bought off Congress on both sides of the isle.
It's actually funny that this ban would essentially be a mirror of what the CCP policy is on social media in China. Part of the reason why CCP banned FB, Google, Twitter, Youtube was so their domestic copy cats can flourish. But the question is why is Tiktok being singled out. China has more than just Bytedance, I'm sure if you dig deeper Chinese capital is involved in a lot of things in the tech world. Reddit is backed by Tencent, Riot Games (league of legends) is owned by Tencent.
People think the internet is some wild west and they want a truly unregulated internet The reality is that 95% of Citizen have no idea what's out there .. considering Dark Webs etc The stuff that is filtered out . . . .and honestly .. . THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW!! Regulation of the internet is there to maintain peace. . . . Foreign Government interfere is just the tip of the iceberg Rocket River
So it seems this Is far more wide reaching. So this would essentially allow the government to spy on people At will without warrants? Bans VPNs A secretary of communications to.monitor for basically anti American sentiment (which they decide what it is. ) I need to read more on this. Rocket River
Not sure if we have an active TikTok conversation somewhere, but thought I'd bump this since Congress is again talking about forcing the sale of the company. I still think this is some unAmerican BS to target a particular company with legislation. If there is some actual risk to Americans, how about we pass some data security law that would apply to all the tech companies instead of just the Chinese one?
Bill is headed to the Senate.............guess who voted against it after there leader did a flip flop after meeting the money man at tik toc, I also love Mace`s last line Republican opponents to TikTok bill say Trump didn’t influence their vote From CNN's Clare Foran, Manu Raju and Sam Fossum GOP Reps. Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene both told CNN that their decision to vote against the TikTok bill was not because former President Donald Trump signaled his opposition. Greene told CNN that she didn’t speak to Trump about the bill and voted against it based on her own conclusions, saying, “He has his opinion on the bill and he can voice it. It doesn’t mean that we’re all robots.” She said that this bill does not effectively protect Americans’ data or protect national security from China, saying a far more comprehensive approach would be needed to deal with both issues. She also raised concerns over who would buy TikTok. Mace similarly told Manu her vote was not about Trump’s opposition, saying that she's "been against this from the very beginning before anyone else weighed in. It’s the libertarian in me. It’s not the role of government to ban apps from the app store. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that."
They need to make laws that force platform owners to police their own platforms or be held accountable and liable for truth or lies posted on their sites. DD
Whats un-American about this? Until 2013, foreign entities or individuals couldn't own more than 25% of a media company operating in the US. Social media is literally a form of media and even the updated FCC regulations state that foreign media ownership should be reviewed on a case by case basis. Until very recently, we have always limited foreign ownership of media entities. So I dont know how we can call this un-American. Now I think the correct fix is to classify social media as media and bring it into the FCC's purview for regulation (which would not only allow the FCC to order divestment but also allow it to implement other common carrier regulations). Furthermore we have a literal committee that analyzes foreign purchases of US assets (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US). Since the 1980s, CFIUS has had the power to outright reject foreign purchases of US assets. CFIUS has even ordered divestments before. TikTok in particular consists of multiple legal entities (one of which exists in Los Angeles). In fact when Trump was floating a TikTok ban when he was president, they were talking about using CFIUS to order ByteDance to divest the US entity based in Los Angeles.
