Bill to Ban TikTok

LostintheCycle

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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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if you banned people from being locked out of their own devices, as they are with the smartphone, the entire """app""" ecosystem as we know it would not exist, and with it, tik tok
Explain what you're talking about?
Are you referring to unlocked system access? Opensource smartphones?
 
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If Tik-Tok dies, another app (that is gonna be the exact same thing) will take its place, just like vine before tik tok, is a cycle, no matter how much you cringe about it, this way of entertainment is here to stay, thanks to the average consumer attention span, you are gonna still be monitored and your privacy violated, just instead of the Chinese government, this time will be a Corporation uled by, you guess it chinese investors, making all this kinda futile. Not mentioning the fact that an american corpo from silicon valley will definetely give your info to Washington D.C

In my case i do not oppose or support tiktok's ban, i just think that is just too much effort for what is essentially nothing.
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Congressional hearing on TikTok today with chief executive Shou Zi Chew. Congressional hearings are typically fucking worthless shows where the full stupidity of elected officials gets to be on display, and this one is no different. Uni-party was out in full force to ask bad faith questions regarding TikTok. Every concern they lobbied is true of FaceBook, YouTube, etc, but of course they're exempt because they play nice with glowies and keep the propaganda going. How much of this uni-party attempt to get this app banned is just because the lobbyists for FaceBook/YouTube fear this is cutting into their bottom lines? All these tech companies are desperate to emulate TikTok's success but nothing they do is catching on (nobody cares about YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels are just TikTok re-posts.)

These clowns are more willing to ban an app for apparent foreign interference than they are willing to ban foreign real estate investors buying up all the farm land/homes, funny thing innit?
 
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RisingThumb

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Legislation is making some progress, but it is very preliminary.
I am still very much against any sort of ban on the app, the real concern should be what the domestic tech companies are doing in coordination with the feds to spy on and censor it's own citizens.
This just provides powers to ban something... not exactly useful or even effective as the Government bans piracy but look how effective that is. Some governments ban TOR and look how effective that is. Some governments ban pornography and look how effective that is.

Point being, the government is ineffective at banning digital things. I would also add the point, that wanting the government to ban things, is an appeal to their authority and their ideas of good and evil- and you're effectively forking over your own power as an individual to this entity that acts in service of itself. It's not to say it's bad, but it's rather short sighted to support the government regarding TikTok, as by slippery slope, this can extend to other social media when convenient.

In reality this is probably economic dick swinging between America and China.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Point being, the government is ineffective at banning digital things.
To an extent, yes the technically inclined can still bypass that sort of thing, but stripping it from the normies is what they truly care about.
In the case of TikTok a major factor is getting complete control over the digital narrative/propaganda, taking away (or at the very least making it a major pain in the ass to bypass) this source of alternative information from normies keeps the general consensus more easy to sway. I know some people are still doubtful that TikTok contains genuinely informative (some may even say "based") content, but it does.
This just provides powers to ban something...
Indeed, sets a precedent that they can start banning apps on the flimsy premise that they originate from foreign sources, how long until such a thing trickles down to websites?
 
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InsufferableCynic

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Even if they outright banned TikTok it's not going to solve the problem. Kids will either just sideload it or will find a different service to use.

The problem is social media and it's influence on politics and society, NOT one isolated app that's "chinese spyware"

If you want to avoid spyware, your only choice is open source. If they are worrying about spyware in one particular app right now despite every app having some degree of spyware in it, then they really missed the boat.

I want TikTok gone as much as the next guy, but it has to be removed by being abandoned, not by some government decree.
 

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Even if they outright banned TikTok it's not going to solve the problem. Kids will either just sideload it or will find a different service to use.

The problem is social media and it's influence on politics and society, NOT one isolated app that's "chinese spyware"

If you want to avoid spyware, your only choice is open source. If they are worrying about spyware in one particular app right now despite every app having some degree of spyware in it, then they really missed the boat.

I want TikTok gone as much as the next guy, but it has to be removed by being abandoned, not by some government decree.
As much as I agree with the sentiment that it'll die by being abandoned, your argument doesn't logically follow. Open source doesn't avoid spyware, and there's been plenty of open source projects that have had spyware or other similar problems. Additionally, not every app has spyware, but it is the status quo to collect as much data as possible.

They(assuming they is the government) struggle to make useful legislation on digital technology because digital technology changes at a rate that outpaces government legislation and policies. I wouldn't say they missed the boat, so much as they never saw the boat. If they is the people using them, they simply don't know any better and can't act any better due to the network effects of these apps and their addictive natures and not knowing the damage it does under the skull.

If TikTok gets abandoned, that's actually... fairly frightening because whatever takes over will probably be worse.
 
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Shantotto

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I'm a little bit surprised no one has mentioned that Instagram reels is basically tiktok integrated into IG. In fact a lot of the reels on there r just recycled from tiktok. No need for another app to replace tiktok, although I'm confident many will try. I'm sure zuck will be happy to suck all the tiktok refugees into his co-ed social/business conglomerate. Friends who uninstall tiktok end up repeating the endless cycle of scrolling on instagram reels anyway and if they r really desparate, YouTube shorts.
 
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MacchyMacchy

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Only american people think that Tik Tok is a China spyware, it's just propaganda. The truth is that tik tok was invented by a chinese but the company headquarters is in the cayman islands, the tik tok platform they use in china is different from the one we use and also the tik tok data is collected from the offices that they are present in various states and the FBI has no evidence that they are being sent to the Chinese government.

It makes no sense to accuse tik tok of influencing western political opinions when social media and American search engines have already been doing it for years. I think that there will be two possible scenarios at the end of this story: tik tok will be replaced by a another identical application, perhaps by Meta, or tik tok will end up under the control of American politics and the FBI such as twitter, facebook, etc. In both cases it will not be a W
 
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kswiss

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Simply put, it's not a fair fight: it's pitting mass data aggregation utilized to hijack millions of years of evolution against your ability to resist temptation. To your point more specifically, there are better things all around that people are rejecting en masse in order to spend more time scrolling. I agree with you in spirit, but you cannot expect people at scale to be able to resist these things anymore.

It just hasn't been a fair fight in awhile. The fact that the algorithms' torrent is so strong that I am lucky to get the occasional breath of air that I do (like visiting websites like this? lol). I wish it was as easy as choosing one option over the other, but tech is tech and we aren't going to dumb-down.
 
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LostintheCycle

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i kinda like chaos, like not world ending chaos but rile up the zoomers chaos so yeah ban it that would be dope. feds are getting zoomers data regardless due to leaving careless internet footprint
Same dude. I remember when my state did a major ban on phones in classrooms, and I thought it was hilarious seeing zoomies seethe at it. Especially when they'd try to rationalize their phone addiction by saying they used it for "education" by "looking up stuff in class". Unfortunately not every school became stringent assholes about compliance, and would sometimes overlook phone users because they'd rather not break the class flow to reprimend a student who doesn't want to pay attention anyway. The absolute troll of banning TikTok is worth it.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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Only american people think that Tik Tok is a China spyware, it's just propaganda.
Good point, to my understanding Europe hasn't been causing a similar fuss over the app right?
It makes no sense to accuse tik tok of influencing western political opinions when social media and American search engines have already been doing it for years.
Unfortunately there are still people out there who think that's merely a baseless conspiracy/tin foil hat type shit. Just look at all the people out there denying the stuff coming out about Twitter/FaceBook working with the govt to suppress info. It makes sense for them to take that narrative route since the general public can rationalize a foreign entity doing this sort of thing rather than acknowledging the domestic threat. Combined with the fact that the condemnation of TikTok is coming from older people who have never even used it/have only heard sensationalist reporting, their free to craft whatever narrative they want. If they can't convince people TikTok is bad because of China, then it will be the "think of the children!" route by intentionally amplifying dangerous "TikTok trends" in the media.
 
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LostintheCycle

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This is not quite a ban but this is some interesting recent news. Not really a ban, nor targetting just Tiktok, but it's something.
Article: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access
I think the parental controls will be a dud that is easily sidestepped, the thing I really think is good is the curfew if it's applied properly. Most kids wont be shilling out for a VPN, so they wont have much choice unless they buy one. So many kids have fucked up sleep schedules.. look it's fine if you are doing something with that time, by all means stay up all night making music, writing, studying, just don't fuck up your sleep so you can doomscroll more, that's lame.
I am curious what social media's this will apply to. Also I am curious how this will apply to existing accounts.
Also I thought this part was funny.
But Common Sense Media and other advocacy groups warned some parts of the new legislation could put children at risk.
Ari Z Cohn, a free speech lawyer for TechFreedom, said the bill posed "significant free speech problems".
"There are so many children who might be in abusive households," he told the BBC, "who might be LGBT, who could be cut-off from social media entirely."

Bad things will happen to abused kids if we ban social media!... like what? Opposition really grasping for something here...
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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This is not quite a ban but this is some interesting recent news. Not really a ban, nor targetting just Tiktok, but it's something.
Article: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access
I think the parental controls will be a dud that is easily sidestepped, the thing I really think is good is the curfew if it's applied properly. Most kids wont be shilling out for a VPN, so they wont have much choice unless they buy one. So many kids have fucked up sleep schedules.. look it's fine if you are doing something with that time, by all means stay up all night making music, writing, studying, just don't fuck up your sleep so you can doomscroll more, that's lame.
I am curious what social media's this will apply to. Also I am curious how this will apply to existing accounts.
Also I thought this part was funny.
But Common Sense Media and other advocacy groups warned some parts of the new legislation could put children at risk.
Ari Z Cohn, a free speech lawyer for TechFreedom, said the bill posed "significant free speech problems".
"There are so many children who might be in abusive households," he told the BBC, "who might be LGBT, who could be cut-off from social media entirely."

Bad things will happen to abused kids if we ban social media!... like what? Opposition really grasping for something here...
100% against this. Government shouldn't need to step in for retarded parents, even if this (hopefully) filters out the equally idiotic kids. Remember when everyone was dicking on China for gaming curfews? Once they have the precedent, they will not stop.
The end game of internet legislation is a digital ID traced back to your real life, don't ever forget that.
 
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MacchyMacchy

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Good point, to my understanding Europe hasn't been causing a similar fuss over the app right?

I'm from Italy and here, one of the biggest tik tok star is our most famous politician Silvio Berlusconi. Here politics is not embarking on a crusade against tik tok as in the USA, indeed you can easily find our politicians making cringe videos on that social network to attract the votes of young people. The press begins to talk about the possibility that it is spyware only recently following the latest European legislation and the American ban in sight. Apart from this, people who had news of the dangers of Tik Tok before now followed American channels
 
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Natalia Simp

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Tik Tok is only a meme in DC because they don't have an active glowie in-building with them. Look up Time's person of the year from 2011 (Zuckerbug), in his interview, the local FBI glowie pops in for a second to say hi, and goes back to his office down the hall.

Tik Tok, being a Chinese company, gives zero shits about having an in-office US agent that tells them what to promote and what to kill. They have Chinese agents on Chinese Tik Tok, and the rest of the world is just to make bucketloads of money.

And we should be VERY worried about the new RESTRICT Act that aims to work against "foreign adversaries", whatever that will mean. Take a read, yourself.

 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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The more I read into this, the worse it gets. And it all makes perfect sense now why the media on all sides have been shilling this "TikTok Ban" so hard, yet I haven't heard a single outlet/politician refer specifically to this piece of legislation. That TikTok ban is just the front for this monstrosity of a bill, much like the vague threat of terrorism being what got us the Patriot Act.

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Had a hunch and was bored. unsurprisingly nearly everyone mentioned in this bill glows. This bill has overwhelming White House approval as well from what I've read.
That's 2/3rds of the people sponsoring this that I could definitively pull up with quick searches. Seriously is there an easy to browse complete list of WEF attendees/figures out there yet?
WEF involvement is merely surface level stuff though, you gotta be involved in some nasty business prior to even get the invite. But should give a good idea of where this sort of nonsensical legislation is coming from.

This "Restrict Act" not only a gateway for the US to justify erecting its own "Great Firewall" of sorts, but it's the Patriot Act 2.0, with pre-emptive legislation targeting the newly developing fields of quantum encryption as well as biometrics.

Here's the main highlights/breakdowns of the RESTRICT Act:
tl;dr: The "Restrict Act" gives the Executive Branch/DOJ broad control with little legislative oversight over anything related to Internet communications and infrastructure. Be it apps, websites, home security services, "smart" cars, you name it, the govt will be granted to ability to not only to surveil it, but also ban/censor it, and punish anyone who attempts to circumnavigate said bans to access/share restricted content.

Needless to say this is really, really bad. Every media outlet is essentially misrepresenting this purposed law. Please don't fall for the propaganda. This isn't just about the government trying to get control over the digital narrative, this isn't just American companies trying to legislate a major competitor out of their market, and there is absolutely zero moral standing from our legislators against the spying accusations of the TikTok app when Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (all of them!) do it to an even greater extent and no one on Capitol Hill bats an eye. What this truly is, is an invitation to relinquish control over the access of digital information and the right to privacy to unchecked bureaucrats. The slippery slope is NOT a logical fallacy, any one who as paid attention long enough to this sort of thing knows that already, the potential is there with this legislation.

If you can, please get the word out about this.
 
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