spit_evil_olive_tips @ spit_evil_olive_tips @beehaw.org

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10 mo. ago

this seems to be a consistent theme in all the reporting I've read:

Per the report, Biden was bolstered to run for a second term — despite fears surrounding his age and low approval ratings — by the positive 2022 midterm elections results, where Democrats retained the Senate and only narrowly lost the House of Representatives.

which really shows just how brain-dead Biden and Democratic leadership are.

yes, they did better than expected in the midterms. but they still lost the House. and Biden was not on the ballot. a college freshman in a Political Science 101 class should be able to tell you that Democrats over-performing in the midterms does not necessarily tell you much about Biden's chances for re-election against Trump.

that boost in the midterms was in large part because of anger about the Dobbs ruling from the Supreme Court and the resulting state-level abortion bans. what did they do to capitalize on that anger? to try to focus it in a productive direction? basically nothing.

and of course, what else happened between the midterms and 2024? Israel intensified its genocide in Gaza in response to the October 7th attacks. Biden and the Democrats backed Israel, insisted on continuing to arm their military, and told anyone who didn't like it to shut up and stop complaining - on the assumption that they had no choice but to vote for Biden regardless. then a bunch of those voters get disillusioned, stay home on election day, and Biden does the shocked Pikachu face.

Its pure speculation but

you know you can just...stop typing after that, right?

i suspect china may have purposely pushed for the tiktok is spyware narrative and fueled the china bad bandwagon themselves.

you're making the same racist assumption that underlies the TikTok ban itself - that Chinese people are inherently nefarious, untrustworthy, always hatching schemes and plots and subterfuge.

the US does not need to be "tricked" into passing laws that are rooted in anti-Chinese bigotry. it's basically a national pastime.

both the DMCA in the US as well as that Japanese law are implementations of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. that is why they can be discussed in a fairly interchangeable way.

Which law exactly?

the paragraph after the one you quoted answers this question:

Note that this discussion was based on Japanese law, but the same language is found in the DMCA Section 1201(a)(1)(A): “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” That law is more than 26 years old, going into effect a month after Google was founded, but the language remains in place.

from an Ezra Klein op-ed published in Feb 2024, arguing that it's not too late for Biden to step aside, this paragraph has been wedged in my brain ever since:

I have this nightmare that Trump wins in 2024. And then in 2025 and 2026, out come the campaign tell-all books, and they’re full of emails and WhatsApp messages between Biden staffers and Democratic leaders, where they’re all saying to each other, this is a disaster, he’s not going to win this, I can’t bear to watch this speech, we’re going to lose. But they didn’t say any of it publicly, they didn’t do anything, because it was too dangerous for their careers, or too uncomfortable given their loyalty to Biden.

those floodgates are about to open, of people in the White House spilling the beans about just how mentally diminished Biden has been.

I'm old enough to remember when Democrats talked about Reagan having Alzheimer's during his 2nd term, and criticized Republicans for forming a reality distortion field and insisting that no, everything was fine actually, Reagan was in perfect health.

They hand-delivered memos to Mr. Biden describing social media posts the campaign staff had persuaded allies to write that pushed back on negative articles and polls.

consent factory go brrrrr

It’s like they made their stores as hostile as possible to shop in.

I saw a tweet that called it a "weird deodorant museum" and that phrase is now permanently etched into my brain. it's such a perfect description, similar to "private taxi for your burrito" for Doordash etc.

the only place that consistently has my medication

is there a Costco near where you live? if so, you might give their pharmacy a try (you don't need to pay for a Costco membership if all you're doing is getting a prescription)

I had similar challenges finding a pharmacy that consistently has my ADHD medication in stock. a few months ago I tried Costco based on a recommendation from my doctor, so far they've been able to fill my prescription every month no problem.

me sowing (signing a bill into law and bragging about its bipartisan support): haha fuck yeah!

me reaping (hearing that the Supreme Court has ruled 9-0 to uphold the law that I signed): well this fucking sucks. what the fuck.

there's always fierce competition in the category of Dumbest Own-Goal by a Democrat...but here comes President "only mostly dead...still slightly alive" Biden with a last-minute buzzerbeater and....MUH GAWD HE'S DONE IT!

this is especially funny when juxtaposed against the TikTok ban and its supposed "data privacy" rationale.

if a Chinese company spies on you - we try to ban their app entirely, or force it to be sold to an American company.

if an American company spies on you - we tell them they have to wait 5 years before they can do it again. they don't even pay a fine.

also, GM sold this data to data brokers rather than directly to the insurance companies that supposedly wanted the data. these brokers are a completely unregulated industry, there are no limits on who they can sell the data to.

everyone is saying we need to ban TikTok because "what if the Chinese government gets data on US citizens". here's the fun part. if they want that data, all they need to do is set up a shell company and buy it from these data brokers. they don't need TikTok.

comprehensive data privacy legislation, along the lines of the GDPR, is the only thing that has any chance at being effective here.

tapping the "there are no good billionaires" sign

remember when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, slapped "Democracy dies in darkness" on the masthead, and a bunch of MSNBC-brained liberals thought it was going to be the newspaper that led the resistance against Trump?

I just woke up from a years-long coma. could someone tell me how that worked out?

And you think Xiaohongshu is run by the Chinese workers?

oh yes daddy, harder. shove those words right into my mouth.

And I’m pretty sure that’s the approach that lawmakers have taken with this

well, sometimes...I linked in this comment to some statements made by the Republican congressman who sponsored the original bill. he was pretty clear that he wanted the ban because he thinks TikTok is pushing propaganda, not just from the Chinese, but the Chinese Communist Party (which has been a long-standing right-wing bogeyman - that congressman was even the chair of the "House Select Committee on the CCP")

I believe that’s the primary angle they’ve taken to get around First Amendment concerns.

this is true, in the same way that Trump in his first campaign promised a "Muslim ban" and then when they tried to actually implement it they realized they needed to frame it as a "travel ban...applying to countries that happen to have a lot of Muslims...oh and also North Korea because look at us, we're definitely not discriminating against people based solely on religion"

everyone (except the right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court) saw through the "travel ban" facade pretty easily. it's been disappointing to see how many people uncritically repeat "well, there's a data privacy angle to it too..." as if it's a legitimate justification and not just another facade.

I've been very cynical about the TikTok ban, and assumed people would work around it by sideloading the APK on Android phones, after it was removed from the app stores (which, as I detailed in this comment, could theoretically get random users who share the APK with friends prosecuted by the federal government and charged with a $5000 per user fine)

but this is exceeding my wildest expectations

"oh, but it's full of Chinese propaganda!!!" people will whine. cool. don't care. Twitter and Facebook are full of American propaganda, no one seems to be falling over themselves to ban those apps from app stores.

if propaganda is the concern, have schools teach critical thinking and how to recognize propaganda techniques. they won't do that, of course, because they want people to be susceptible to American propaganda.

haha class solidarity go brrr. the average American worker has more in common with the average Chinese worker than they do with an American oligarch. all of the American propaganda about how Chinese people are inherently untrustworthy and nefarious is gonna fall apart as people interact with actual Chinese people and realize "oh they're pretty much just like me, other than the language barrier".

and TikTok-style shortform video is very nearly the ideal medium for surmounting that language barrier. it was already commonplace to have captions in TikTok videos. start captioning videos on RedNote in both English and Chinese and bang, language differences don't matter nearly as much anymore.

pretty strong "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes" vibes:

The 1980 October Surprise theory refers to an allegation that representatives of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign made a secret deal with Iranian leaders to delay the release of American hostages until after the election between Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, the incumbent.

vs

President-elect Trump lauded the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal struck Wednesday, saying it would not have happened without his victory in November over Vice President Harris.

meanwhile Israel will continue to illegally occupy & annex land, and take Palestinian hostages (except, when Israel does it, they're not called hostages, they're in "administrative detention")

tapping the sign: Omar El Akkad, October 25th 2023

One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.

Apple announcing a new product would be news.

speculation that Apple might announce a new product...is not news.

“tiktok” does not appear to me to be a viewpoint

seriously? have you not paid attention to any of the arguments in favor of the ban that boil down to "it's pushing evil Chinese Communist propaganda into the minds of our precious children"?

here's the original bill - H.R.7521 - Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

it was introduced by Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin).

here's a tweet of his from March:

"This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users. America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States." - Rep. Gallagher

and from November 2023, in a Fox News appearance:

Rep. Gallagher on why it’s critical to ban or force a sale of TikTok:

“It would be national self-suicide to allow the dominant media platform in America to be controlled, or at least be influenced by, the Chinese Communist Party.”

the advocates for the ban have been very clear, from the start, that they believe TikTok has a viewpoint - specifically that it's controlled or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. and they want to discriminate against that viewpoint.

id say you have a stronger argument than viewpoint discrimination by saying it violates the first ammendment of the users of tiktok, personally, though the courts might disagree.

have you read the bill? the actual law, not news articles or summaries of it?

I linked it in this comment. go read it, it's short, and not terrible as far as legalese goes.

the gist of it is that the law makes it illegal to run an app store (or anything that looks like an app store) that offers downloads of the TikTok app.

so the two big obvious targets of the law are Apple and Google...but it applies equally to everyone. F-Droid could violate it, in theory, by hosting the APK for download through their servers.

or for example, say the ban took effect, and TikTok gets removed from app stores. some tech-savvy high school kid knows how to copy the APK from their Android phone before it gets deleted, and shows their friends how to sideload it onto their phones.

then a bunch of other people ask for it too, so this kid uploads it to some filesharing service, passes around the link, and eventually it gets around to 100 other classmates.

that high school kid has violated the TikTok ban. the federal government can levy a fine against them of half a million dollars ($5,000 per user who downloaded it)

does that satisfy your desire to have the ban infringe on the free speech of "real" people, and not just Apple and Google?

tik-tok could be used to sideload data gathering for China, such as government officials camera or microphone use

but again - nothing about that is unique to TikTok.

do you think the federal government should force Apple and Google to ban the Twitter app, because of the risk that Elon Musk might use it to spy on politicians to get leverage for the 2026 midterms?

or, since Musk has said he's starting to meddle in European politics as well - should the EU require Apple and Google to ban the Twitter app on European soil, out of a similar fear that the Twitter app could be used as spyware?

beyond the worry of poisoning our society with propaganda.

of the 3 apps that I mentioned - TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter - aren't all 3 of them "poisoning our society with propaganda"?

why is TikTok singled out for the ban, do you think?

does it have anything to do with the long-standing right-wing grievance and fear and distrust towards Ghyna (or the "ChiComs", if you prefer the pre-Trump right-wing nomenclature)?

because as far as I can tell, every argument about this ends up boiling down to "sure, lots of apps do it...but it's uniquely bad when an app written by Chinese people does it"

you arent responding to their point about framing this as a 1st ammendment issue being problematic.

I've posted previously about why "the federal government can require Apple and Google to remove apps it doesn't like, and that has nothing to do with free speech" is a laughable position. I didn't feel like rehashing it here.