House approves sell-or-be-banned TikTok measure, attaching it to foreign aid bill

Crazy that the proposed solution to propaganda is banning media instead of investing in education that promotes critical thinking. Or maybe the idea here is "no propaganda except mine".

Looking at things pragmatically widespread education of the population takes time and simply won't take for some people. There are folks today complaining that "they don't teach taxes in school". These people have a problem filling out a 1040EZ. Not exactly encouraging.
At the same time Tic Tok represents a single vector for current or potential foreign propaganda and intelligence gathering targeting the American public. Opportunities to nip a single bud (so to speak) are few and far between and probably won't be possible in the near future.
TL;DR - The "sell or ban" is a short term measure that won't take a lot of time, education is a long term measure that takes years.
- Did you know in some countries, tax preparation corporations don't get to lobby to prevent the automation of taxes?
And yet China is banning basically the whole Western internet, foreign companies must enter joint ventures with Chinese companies under government control. Reciprocity is fair. Why should Byte Dance be allowed to take in billions to fund Chinese gulags?
- Why do you want our social media to mirror China? That's the real question. What's the US gonna do with our data that's so much better? Oh yeah, fund our allies genocides! Yay! 🥳

You could argue that the perceptions of TikTok as a CCP tool of propaganda is an indirect foreign aid to Taiwan
God knows how much Russia tries to use social media to turn sentiments against Ukraine
Ultimately I think short form content encouraging platforms at large need to go down anyways so sucker punching the current biggest offender is right by me!
- The only thing I've seen about Taiwan on TikTok are videos talking about just how bad China's casualty rate would be if they tried anything.
- Short form content platforms aren't going anywhere, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts are just a carbon copy of tiktok. No problems with them, of course, because they're American.
“Pork” on a bill has been a problem for decades.

How about a digital bill of rights that applies to every corporation you fucking cowards!

grabs popcorn

mimes eating popcorn, while pointing to overlayed captions, with a Taylor Swift song playing in the background

Well the Senate killed the earlier bill. There's a decent chance they pass the Ukraine/Israel aid bill without this amendment. It would then be stricken in reconciliation. Unfortunately there's also a decent chance the Senate passes it because this version probably fixes things the Senators had problems with.

If it does get passed there's a very good chance there's a court order to prevent anything until the courts rule on the constitutionality of the law. If Bytedance loses that there's zero chance they sell though. The US market is not big enough for them to jettison an international company.

Not big enough. I imagine it’s their biggest market.
- It's the biggest single country but in a world of 7.9 Billion people, 148 million is a fraction.
Why are you cheerleading for TikTok to remain in the hands of a US adversary, during the same week when said adversary forced a US company to abjectly ban US-based messaging apps?
Retaliation. Tit for tit.
- If the government can just point at a company and force a fire sale then there is no market, there is no order, there is no financial industry. This is an incredibly dangerous law.

Weren't you all just hating on Republicans for not voting for that bill.

How about an all bills must be fucking separate bill?

This was a separate bill. Til Tok, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel were all separate. They were brought to the floor at the same time, but they could’ve all been voted on differently
- At least the Genocrats cant hide behind the "it was bundled in with Ukraine" excuse now. The end up the exact same as the Republicunts.
  Both sides are exactly the same.

Oh, no! What will I do without my level 5 gyatt rizz livvy fanum tax dunne rizzing up baby gronk ice spice wat da dawg doin skibidi toilet in real life only in ohio we go jim zyzz creatine alpha sigma cuh dey board?

This bill would also outlaw using VPNs to view such restricted platforms, and has a general policy that would allow lawmakers to ban any platform they claim is a national security risk. No overreach here!

I see no issue with banning tik tok.

It's not even "banning tik-tok". It's "separate your interests, or we block your product".
Which isn't exactly something that we haven't seen before in the U.S. and it for sure isn't anything new in China where plenty of services, games....etc are blocked with "Chinese only" versions of those services.
- It's a ban. They have stated in no uncertain terms that they will not sell or separate any interests. It's not for our "security" or any of that absolute BS either. It's for their own profits and because they want people's data.
  The fact that you'd want our media to even remotely resemble the highly sensored versions in China is insane to me. Y'all are just happy to go along with this because you don't like tiktok. That's it. That's all it took for a lot of you. I'd say I expected better but it's becoming more obvious every day that lemmy is where the old and out of touch people migrated to. Despite it seeming like it would be the opposite.
  You genuinely don't care if the government oversteps as long as it fits your bias. The fact that they couldn't get it to go through as a single issue twice so they had to shove it with other issues just to get their way should be enough to piss most people off but here we are. It's a shame. I'm disappointed in how easily manipulated so many of you are. Truly.
what did tiktok do to deserve being banned, and why is it okay for other companies to do that?
- Feeding data to the CCP, helping them identify people who can be easily swayed into espionage. Say someone gets into a position of power. "Hey, remember when you were 12 and said this on tik Tok? Now we need you to be out bitch or we're leaking this."
  Look at the things that have gone viral on Tik Tok, it's like their algorithm prioritizes things that are toxic to make American youth shittier. Kia boys comes to mind.
  There is also the fact that China bans all American social media out of fear that we'd use it to manipulate their people. If they aren't allowing our businesses to compete fairly, why should we allow theirs? Also, they probably are projecting that fear because they are doing exactly that with TikTok.
  The app has more permissions than most apps and is highly invasive. They sent a push notification to all their users based on Geo location saying who their rep was and giving their phone number saying to call them to stop this bill. That alone seems like a major abuse of power. They are using the data they have to try to sway the American politicians already.
Except for the part where they couldn't get support for it twice so they shoved it in here to get their way? But that's ok because you don't like the silly dancing app that you know basically nothing about right? Other than "China bad", of course.

It's not even about propaganda it's not having it until their thumb, they can't push a button and ensure the top video under trans on every search is Matt Walsh, and yeah on all other major platforms if you search trans people critical of trans people pop up. The reasoning isn't popularity or engagement, the US government has ordered them to do it through backroom tax deals and Slapp orders. Next stop for the US gov is gonna be the fediverse and AT proto, they are gonna argue that not just anyone should be trusted and that running a social media server is a big task. security blah blah children, protecting your data. Than lass a bill require you to obtain an FCC license to host your own social media site. It only gets worse from here folks

Look, I hate TERFs and distrust the US government, but this take is just conspiracy theory nonsense. Unless you have some evidence that the US government is forcing social media to promote anti-trans content, I have absolutely zero reason to believe your claim over the more believable explanation: that promoting controversial content drives engagement and increases ad revenue.

"they won't let the algorithm be sold and without it, it's an empty deal" I don't see how that's a problem. Obviously there's a great deal of knowledge about what "the algorithm" does across the userbase; just get users to raise tickets about what they miss and others to upvote them, then knock them off one by one. There's nothing magic about "users who liked post A also liked post B" or "company X paid us $1000000000000 so here's post C whether you like it or not". It might even end up being better than the original.