Social TikTok users flood Congress with calls as potential forced sale advances in House

[Happiness]

Can someone explain how congress should/is getting involved in a private business and threatening to ban them.

Sure. All trading is Inherently backed by the government. Actually all of society is a complex matrix of social contracts governed by legislation backed up by the government who are granted exclusive right of force

Because the US government is a constitutional republic that functions through representive democracy; the government, as representatives of the people and being the sole reason private businesses gets to operate can exercise thier right to remove business they view as detrimental to society.

You get to complain to them so they might change thier mind or vote them out for people you think will reinstate tik tok...or whatever.
Is this clear enough?

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

Can someone explain how congress should/is getting involved in a private business and threatening to ban them.

Ask a leftist:

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

Sure. All trading is Inherently backed by the government. Actually all of society is a complex matrix of social contracts governed by legislation backed up by the government who are granted exclusive right of force

Because the US government is a constitutional republic that functions through representive democracy; the government, as representatives of the people and being the sole reason private businesses gets to operate can exercise thier right to remove business they view as detrimental to society.

You get to complain to them so they might change thier mind or vote them out for people you think will reinstate tik tok...or whatever.
Is this clear enough?

 

[Scheme]

I only have a cursory knowledge of it. To me it looks the same as Vine, which died. Why is TikTok so bad? I get it is Chinese spyware, but I don't understand what societal ills it is causing vs just the garbage that "content creators" make and post.

Most research I've seen shows Facebook is the worst of the worst for social media.

I don't think like most social media it is explicitly bad. But the emergent behaviour from it is the worst of all social media platforms.

It leads to people with lower attention spans.

It leads people to be easily persuaded to harm themselves or others for views (like the blackout challenge, the dancing alongside your car with no driver challenge, the Tide pod challenge, etc.).

It builds echo-chambers quite effectively, as the content is meant to be short and impactful. Very much how a lot of people just read the headlines for their news, a similar thing is happening on TikTok where people are getting a short and sensationalized view on almost every subject that pops up in their feeds.

It has people constantly chasing their 15 minutes of fame, even when the only reward for it is a somewhat large number stored in a database somewhere.

Also just constantly watching 5 second clips of a hot woman dancing and then moving on to the next has psychological effects that I think are similar to porn addiction.

I wont comment on the spyware aspects of it, I'm not sure how much of that is sensationalized or really that different from other apps.

 

[Rob Battisti]

Why? If you don't use it, it doesn't affect your life at all.

It’s actively making Gen Z into actual mentally impaired people.

 

[Happiness]

It’s actively making Gen Z into actual mentally impaired people.

Gen Alpha maybe moreso

 

[Happiness]

Huh? Ignored for incoherence. See yah.

 

[Rob Battisti]

Gen Alpha maybe moreso

All of them. Anyone on the platform becomes dumber for having been there.

 

[nhbbear]

Ask a leftist:

Depending on who you ask, when, and about what topic, capitalism is convenient when it suits people. I am guilty as well. I am against corporations making billions by passing on incurring costs and taxes, on to us(like gas and oil). I am against corporations paying CEOs and execs tens of millions in salary and then tens of millions in stocks. I am against golden parachutes when some asshole leaves in shame and takes an absolute and absurd fortune with them. I am against lobbyists working to grease up politics to make even more money by getting bills passed by “using their first amendment rights to give millions in campaign monies” to politicians And I am against the complete avoidance of taxes by exploiting loopholes or paying around the same that I do even though they are making billions in profits while I struggle to maintain middle class status as everything but wages increase.

But I say all of this while condemning any other economic plans other than capitalism. This is the capitalistic system that creates absurd wealth imbalances and there is nothing that can be done about it.

 

[nhbbear]

Sure. All trading is Inherently backed by the government. Actually all of society is a complex matrix of social contracts governed by legislation backed up by the government who are granted exclusive right of force

Because the US government is a constitutional republic that functions through representive democracy; the government, as representatives of the people and being the sole reason private businesses gets to operate can exercise thier right to remove business they view as detrimental to society.

You get to complain to them so they might change thier mind or vote them out for people you think will reinstate tik tok...or whatever.
Is this clear enough?

Very helpful. Thanks. And I knew all of that, I just don’t see why they are so concerned with tiktok that they feel the need or right/authority to try and force a company to sell to American owners

 

[ferrisjso]

The ADHD nature of immediately playing videos endlessly is far more addictive than any other platform.

This is true but this is not why they hate Tiktok. They hate tiktok because American corporations can't profit off that addiction and because Tiktok is being used as a place to freely spread criticism of the US regime or in this case the Israeli regime.

Youtube shorts and facebooks reels are the same fucking shit as tiktok just with US capitalist oversight. All these "Tiktok is a plague on society people" won't say a fucking word against what is essentially the same platform.

 

[ferrisjso]

I'll also add, there's nothing wrong with trying to ring your representative. In fact, it's how democracy is suppose to work. Representatives however see it as a waste of time they could use to do thier main job, fundraiser. Those on the hill are insulated and isolated from the world, they like it that way, playing as lords and ladies. The cold reality is that after they convince you to vote for them, most see thier voters as an annoyance. If you examine meta data you'll find policy that gets passed into the law is never representative of what thier voters want, its made by and for those they are funded by ideologically and financially, the rich (me). That's who they talk to, not poor young voters. They do not want direct democracy or action, they always demonize any effort to burst thier Hill bubble.

This should be a pinned post of some sort.

 

[Happiness]

Very helpful. Thanks. And I knew all of that, I just don’t see why they are so concerned with tiktok that they feel the need or right/authority to try and force a company to sell to American owners

In this specific example it's because congress wants to maintain American hegemony in cloud capital. Europe and the rest of the western world has failed to build any of this infrastructure so it uses America's. The only country that has built comparable infrastructure is China, making them the only current rival the US has in this still emergent yet most important market.

Because many of congress get campaign funding, are invested in and are mates with the c-suites of these tech companies they are hugely incentervised to wipe out US competition and in general try to force ideals of American exeptionlism down the rest of the worlds throats.

The security data issue is true, but, if they actually cared they'd be applying regulation to all social media. But what they want, is to maintain a virual monopoly in the infrastructure, that for them offers these main things (among many others)

- money making monopolies
-control of markets
-control of proganda that is personalized and delivered direct to an individual.
-all data and meta data that is collected/spying.

 

[Culombo]

tik tok is a chinese company operating inside the United States .. a massive operation with major influence on americans .. why are some people questioning why would they ban it ? smh .. that crap should've been squashed when it started .. it's amazing that it's been allowed to operate this long here

 

[ferrisjso]

tik tok is a chinese company operating inside the United States .. a massive operation with major influence on americans .. why are some people questioning why would they ban it ? smh .. that crap should've been squashed when it started .. it's amazing that it's been allowed to operate this long here

Because we want people to get perspectives critical of the US and capitalism and a US owned company will restrict those.

Very simple.

 

[Loiosh]

Absolutely.

I would say TikTok is clearly the worst iteration though.

Agreed, although snapchat (believe it or not) is pretty evil too.

The impermanence of snapchats both increases urgency of engagement and lends false confidence in what people can post (because nothing is "impermanent" on the internet).

 

[herpd807]

China does this to our companies.

In the video game industry, if you are an American based company wishing to have access to the chinese market, you have to sell part of your company to a chinese based firm.

Is ridiculous.

 

[Loiosh]

This is the capitalistic system that creates absurd wealth imbalances and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Regulation and higher taxes for the rich. A better social safety net and nationalization of certain essential services.

Capitalism is definitely the way to go but it needs better controls.

 

[Rob Battisti]

Agreed, although snapchat (believe it or not) is pretty evil too.

The impermanence of snapchats both increases urgency of engagement and lends false confidence in what people can post (because nothing is "impermanent" on the internet).

100%

I don’t know how anyone can even argue that we would be worst off without social media specially tiktok and Snapchat.

 

[tdluxon]

I don’t use TikTok but I see this as government overreach… we don’t need them acting like everyone’s parents and controlling what kind of stupid videos people can and can’t watch.