- cross-posted to:
- technology@zerobytes.monster
- cross-posted to:
- technology@zerobytes.monster
TikTok is taking the US government to court.
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TikTok blocks all access from Hong Kong. Can I sue them?
Not as a foreign national.
And not as a Hong-Konger, if you don’t want your family on a blacklist.
Read that as family in a basket. Close enough.
We put them, in a basket
gasps
Removed by mod
Good. The ban is censorship dressed up as national security.
TikTok is state sponsored spyware dressed up as fUnNy ViDeOs
And Facebook isn’t?
Shit I forgot the us government owns 50% of Facebook
Access to the data it’s what matters, ownership is just one method of access.
If this were true, it wouldn’t matter that the US set up the social security number system, because Experian leaked millions of Americans’ SSNs.
It obviously matters who owns a service that millions of citizens use from a country that is a political rival. You’re just hoping to shut down any conversation against TikTok with a whataboutism
We’re talking about individuals’ personal data stored by social media companies being accessible to others (governments, in this case). This has nothing to do with social security.
The problem is that the data is accessable, but that’s not being addressed. This is an improper fix to an actual problem, just facts.
Turns out analogies aren’t your strong suit
When signing up for a tik-tok account, I put in a birth date, a username, an email address for verifcation and that was it. I didn’t need to provide a drivers license, verify that the name I put in was my actual name, that the birth date was my actual birth date. Location isn’t allowed nor was it requested and neither was Nearby devices. It’s actually been a much better behaved application than any American social media app.
So Americans having access to American’s Data is bad but you think China having access to American’s Data is good?
No, they’re both bad.
Alright, thank you for clarifying that you want more restrictions and laws against these companies, it just seemed odd for you to bring up those other businesses in a post talking about the TikTok forced sale and resulting lawsuit.
I’m just happy about them restricting US Citizen data being brokered to adversarial nations including Iran, Russia, China, and others.
They don’t need to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
They don’t need to. Facebook plays ball.
“if one authoritarian government does surveillance even across borders, why can’t all? Anything less than ‘i agree’ here is hypocrisy!”
Noone is saying that. The argument is pretty much that people want more scrutiny applied to other companies beyond tiktok, and ideally not be under constant surveillance by any of them, not that people want to be monitored by all police states equally.
It’s a whataboutist cop out. People who like tiktok just wanna point out how supposedly since tiktok was targeted, then it’s all in bad faith and therefore there could never possibly be a legit concern with tiktok in particular. Any argument to be addressed with “ChInA bAd”
It doesn’t matter who owns it. It’s the data that the US government is accessing.
I couldn’t give a shit about TikTok, I’ve never used it in my life. I just think the US should be open and say we are banning this as we don’t have control over it. Sure China is only doing what we are doing but fuck em. I’d respect that.
Also, it’s got to be about silencing pro-Palestinian rhetoric too.
If they ban TikTok they should ban FaceBook and Instagram too.
Also, it’s got to be about silencing pro-Palestinian rhetoric too.
Yeah trump was talking about banning it in 2020 because he used his time machine to find out what it would be used for in the future. After his harrowing story from the future, I agreed with the effort to ban it because I lOvE gEnOcIdE
…of fucking course it matters who owns it
I refuse to converse with someone who conveys themselves in this manner.
Be better dude. Manners cost nothing.
Have a wonderful day!
Whataboutism isn’t the elevated level of discourse you’re pretending it to be
You’re actually just mad you don’t have an actual response to the fact that you making the about Israel/Palestine makes zero sense
Can I ban NSA from spying on me? I’m not even on fReEeDoOoOoM land, I should be entitled to some amount of privacy
Whatabout! Whatabout!
This is not whataboutism - it’s looking at the bigger picture. The point is that you should want to prevent all mass surveillance by social media companies. Not force them to sell so that the government can get its greedy paws on the data.
I can want both.
So is Instagram
And if someone chooses to watch that, that’s their business. Not nanny government’s. Not saying I do. But none of us have any business telling someone else what they can and cannot watch. That’s part of living in a supposedly “free” country. We aren’t China. You want a “great firewall”, then move there.
In our zeal to shun everything China-related, we must not become them.
The really secret is that the government is jealous of China
Which is any different than YouTube, Lemmy or anything else?
I think people should have a right to shoot themselves in the foot if they choose.
The difference from the perspective of the US is that it’s spyware from a potentially malicious foreign state. China bans US tech companies as well, TikTok took advantage of the US having a much more open market and the state decided that they were acting in bad faith.
I no longer opt into conversations with people who believe “China bad” is an argument winner
What would give them standing? They’d have to be an entity protected by the constitution to claim that protection was harmed. Is it this (Wikipedia)?
TikTok Ltd was incorporated in the Cayman Islands and is based in both Singapore and Los Angeles. source
I guess I’ve never thought about what makes an entity have rights here. Buckingham Palace couldn’t just open shop here and start suing our government, right?
The case is essentially “hey you kinda passed a bill that’s against your own constitution? You’re kinda supposed to follow that…”
Does the US constitution apply for rights of businesses, or is it just people?
Not being snarky I actually don’t know
Corporations are people. Thanks to Citizens United. Though I’d gladly give up TikTok for the court to reverse this decision.
Important rights of businesses in the US constitution include
Important note regarding a business’s right to regulate free speech: The rules of the Constitution are meant to regulate Congress, not businesses or citizens. Therefore, the right to free speech means Congress cannot restrict someone from speaking his or her mind, but a business may be able to.
For example, a radio show has the right to not allow a certain person to speak on its program or to say certain things. Ultimately, such issues are decided by the Supreme Court, and there may be some exceptions, depending on the circumstances.
The constitution applies to the government, not the American (or other) people. “Government shall pass no law…”
List of companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands: https://capedge.com/company/by/incState/E9/active/true?sort=latestQuote.marketCap
Mostly obscure to me, but I looked up GlobalFoundries. Originally divested from AMD, bought IBM’s chip business, got a contract from US Department of Defense in 2023 for manufacturing military chips
I imagine you wouldn’t object to GlobalFoundries suing the US government
Of course, corporations are people and this is bigotry. Check mate.
We decided a while ago that the Constitution protects everyone and every thing in the US because the loophole of declaring people and companies to not be protected was too dystopian even for conservatives at the time.
Something important to note here is that there are various exceptions to freedom of speech protections from various time periods, one such exception is Incitement – If a person has the intention of inciting the violations of laws that is imminent and likely, while directing this incitement at a person or groups of persons, their speech will not be protected under the First Amendment. This test was created by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
This is relevant because alongside the TikTok forced sale they also passed a law against sending sensitive data including personal details and photographs to adversarial nations including Russia, China, Iran, etc. That means that Incitement could be used to describe TikTok operating in any capacity without completely centralizing to the USA, and therefor they would have no protections by the first amendment.
Every negative thing about Tiktok is also true about Instagram and Twitter.
TikTok is solely responsible for that AI voice. Instagram and Twitter have never done anything that compares to the pain and suffering that has caused to humanity.
Except the part about the authoritarian regime, the US has many problems but it’s still a democracy.
Edit: I’m glad you downvote me because you never had to learn what living in a dictatorship is like, I didn’t, but my parents generation still did and I can tell you it looks nothing like the US of today. Women were only allowed to be housewives, groups of more than 2 people couldn’t talk openly in the street because that can lead to dangerous ideas spreading out, you would have to be careful what you said even at home because your neighbour could be listening to sell you out, all pieces of art and media would go through an government office to get censored, and so on, so yes, I stand with what I said, the US is a free democratic country even if you have been spoiled enough to think it is not.
the US has many problems but it’s still a democracy.
LMAO
the US has many problems but it’s still a democracy
Given the choice between hot shit and cold shit still ends with you being covered in shit. Heads or tails between two very similar parties hardly counts as a true democracy.
This is incredibly disingenuous. The US might not be a true democracy, but it’s not an authoritarian regime. Xi and putin disappear people who have an opinion on whether they should be forever-rulers.
The fact that independent parties exist and hold seats at all three levels of government mean you are fundamentally wrong in saying there are only two choices.
The US is a flawed democracy. That’s still better than an authoritarian regime.
Power in the US is held within an oligarchy and when they are threatened people get disappeared. There’s examples of that but one that’s being made an example of in broad daylight is Julian Assange
While the US might be hot shit, it’s still our OWN shit. Keep your cold shit on your side of the pond.
I’m not an American. By your logic, let’s ban all American social media.
It’s not a democracy to me.
Y’know Orwell wrote about how warping definitions was a tool of authoritarianism. Typical ML behavior, tbh.
The United States is a democracy only if oligarchies are democracies
And What does that have to do with anything? We aren’t dealing with China, we’re dealing with a corporation.
According to former head engineer for US locations of TikTok, their services are centralized in China to the extent that it probably cannot even run off the US locations alone, and the Chinese owners ByteDance had complete access to everything on the platform including user data and if you believe security experts: your photo library, text message history, contacts list, and information of nearby wireless devices that you’ve so much as passed by. Also, they’re a military partner in China.
That’s not a US Corporation in any way, shape, or form. That is espionage. The fact that they announced they won’t sell shows that they were never a business operating for profit, it was always about control.
I’m sure you can link these security experts. Since that would be classed as malware and the industry standard is to write public reports on that stuff.
And saying they aren’t like a US corporation because they do some military contracting is fucking hilarious.
Would it be classified as malware? I think people hand over permissions on their smartphone for most or all of those things on a daily basis without a second thought.
The report on the vast extent of data obtained by TikTok was published by an Australian firm called “Internet 2.0” but it’s pay to view. Seems pretty substantial, though, since it hasn’t been debunked in the 2 years since it was published. It also scored the highest recorded score on Malcore, owned by Internet 2.0, with a 63.1.
Lmao. They’re trying to sell a product. They admit on their blog that the reason their score is so high is the trackers. Which are all from other social media companies and an advertiser. Oh and they counted Google Crashlytics.
TIL I learned good app maintenance is considered a red flag.
If they cared about money they wouldn’t be threatening to shut down rather than sell.
We were talking about what TikTok has to do with China, as you seemed to not know how, so you finding their direct obvious ties to China “fucking hilarious” is telling of your intentions.
No that’s ByteDance’s direct ties. TikTok would be indirect. My intention is to get to the bottom of this but it’s constantly just unsourced accusations and conflations. Not to mention excuse after excuse for why we can’t just pass an American GDPR. Instead we have to instigate Red Scare 2.0 which is totally not sus.
ByteDance is not just an indirect tie between TikTok and China, former employees have testified that the TikTok services are centralized in China. The offices in the USA operate like a shell company.
Which country is this?
They’re saying that the US is a democracy and the other country is an authoritarian regime. Can you guess which other country is involved with TikTok other than the USA? I’ll give you a hint: Hundred Acre Woods.
Are women forced to stay at home in China?
Only the ones trafficked in from overseas. And the ones in concentration camps.
You got downvoted so much that I had to check if we were on ml or hexbear. Those CCP shills really operating in broad daylight on this post, they must have gotten board of the echo rooms filled with bots on their home instance.
as expected, they literally said they would pusue legal options before pulling out of the us.
Why can’t a country choose which services it wants to prohibit? Seems strange, it isn’t an American company.
I don’t really care, just wondering.
In the U.S., laws that disadvantage specific entities are generally considered to not be following the “equal protection” part of the (amended) constitution.
Countries without (their own) laws prohibiting it can (and do) prohibit specific services.
Member states of the WTO (like the U.S.) have agreed to allow themselves to be sued for lost profits based on any (new) laws they pass.
But, I’m no expert – this is just the view from my (potentially misinformed) corner of the world.
grabs popcorn
At this point, I’d like to ask: If a foreign company threatens democracy in a country, is it legal for the executive to ban business with that company?
No? Then that doesn’t make sense. It’s a FOREIGN company, the government should have the right to do whatever it needs to protect its citizens in that regard.
The government certainly does have the right to protect citizens and make whatever laws are necessary. In this case, the government can do so by amending the constitution. Until then, the 1st Amendment applies to all citizens, non-citizens, and business entities operating in the United States.
This is just blatantly false, if an organization is committing crimes or doing something the government dislikes then the government will sanction it, like it has done with almost every Russian Oligarch’s business, or front businesses for terrorist groups.
I’m pretty sure the whole point of banning TikTok is that the government is alleging that TikTok has engaged/can be forced to engage in abusive or illegal practices.
I allege that our government engages in abusive or illegal practices.
There are already exceptions to the First Amendment that did not require updating the US Constitution, such as the Supreme Court ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio 1969 which excludes Incitement as protected speech, Incitement being the advocacy of or in any way leading to the breaking of US laws which *checks notes includes sending personal data to adversarial nations including China and therefor TikTok’s operations are not protected.
Especially since it was a bonified Military Operation.
The ironic thing is that if the US government wanted people to stop using it because of the PRC, they should have just leaked some fake Snowden style documents saying that the NSA was using it. Everyone would drop it like a hot potato then.
Not a fan of tiktok content but I do see that it was banned obviously for censorship. A good move.
