[The former White House adviser on technology and competition, Tim] Wu told me that it isn’t easy for the U.S. government to move beyond the vague message of trust us, TikTok is bad. Members of Congress, White House officials and other people in Washington have classified information on the threat of Chinese technology that they can’t talk about, Wu said. They can’t even discuss the existence of this kind of classified information.
“The case is being made in a little bit of a bubble,” Wu said.
But American officials know how to talk to Americans about sensitive, classified information and help us distinguish legitimate risks from hyperbole....
Really? How to talk... truthfully?
And yet you say our officials know how to talk to us. It wasn't successful talk. In 2020, as in 2016, Americans on the losing side had doubts about the integrity of the election.
The reality confronting Americans is that TikTok isn’t the first and it won’t be the last popular or novel technology from China.... You might say to err on the side of security and keep out anything from China.... Nearly all smartphones owned by Americans are made in Chinese factories. Does the government believe they’re risky?... The widely played video game League of Legends is owned by Chinese internet giant Tencent. Is all that still okay?... What about backyard drones made by China’s DJI? Solar panels on Americans’ homes from Chinese companies? Would the U.S. keep out electric vehicles made by Chinese brands or by Volvo, owned by a Chinese company?
There are big differences between an internet-connected sedan or an iPhone made on a Chinese assembly line and TikTok. The app helps shape what a billion people see and believe....
It is a mechanism of free speech. It's how Americans communicate. That deserves more protection, not less.
ADDED: An interesting comment over there:
The truth behind this whole Red Scare about TikTok is that Meta invented a bunch of nonsense to quash the competition, and bribed everyone in the process. The GQP also figured out that most everyone under 40 hate them and are using TikTok to mobilize and organize against them, not to mention educate the youth on topics like racism and sexual identity that the GQP is trying desperately to ban, so TT must be banned. The gerontocrats are playing with fire.
("GQP" is a portmanteau of "GOP" and "Q.")
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76 comments:
They hate Tik-Tok because it's simply a better app
The Regime is invested in having people who are too stupid to handle themselves with an App like Tik Tok.
They need to have stupid people so they will willingly give their information to Google, Facebook and other Regime allied corporations, accept their censorship, and believe in things like the Russian Collusion Hoax.
But Tik Tok has out competed Google and Facebook for the attention of stupid people.
So the Regime must ban the competition.
Not hard.
But American officials know how to talk to Americans about sensitive, classified information and help us distinguish legitimate risks from hyperbole....
Really? How to talk... truthfully?
Again, we are talking about WAPO/NYT's readers.
They are stupid and Tik Tok is doing a better job of misleading them than Google is. Add the WAPO/NYT's to the list of things the Regime uses to mislead stupid people.
"Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans."
Besides guns, you mean.
If Dems were smart, they would let the Republican party be the champions of this.
Let this and the book bans in libraries be the lesson the younger generation receives about how the Republican party doesn't understand the modern world or believe in free speech.
The GQP = Republicans who subscribe to GQ? What do Log Cabin Republicans have against TikTok?
Sinema remarked on the "gerontocrats".
"GQP" is a portmanteau of "GOP" and "Q."
Interesting, yes. Insightful, no. He got off to a plausible start with the attack on Meta, but then ruined it by pretending to all this information about conspiracies by one group (kids) who are hardly organized and another group (GQP) that doesn't even exist.
The widely played video game League of Legends is owned by Chinese internet giant Tencent.
They copyrighted that so that 50 Cent will never be able to use it, however bad inflation gets.
not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans
hmm?
Marijuana? the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act: 1934
Tobacco?
Saccharine?
Red dye #2?
Internal Combustion Engines?
America took away Studebaker cars and Oliver tractors, we survived. Countless newspapers and magazines are history. Tik Tok is nothing but a platform.
The analogy would be, A foriegn distillery and its brand is no longer available. There is still plenty of liquor, just not the one you like.
China either sells it, or the US bans it. Its just a platform
'Wu.'
Hmmm...
The issue is simple: Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company. They are required under Chinese law to cooperate with Chinese intelligence.
So, the Chinese government could ask for all the data on any user and the company has to comply. They collect all kinds of data - locations, use patterns, etc. Most troubling, they have a keylogger built into the program that could record every keystroke, allowing access to passwords, etc. (They assure us it is only used for debugging and troubleshooting. Yeah, sure.) Also, any company of any size in China has on-site party cadres that monitor the company.
According to Statista "in 2022, children in the United States spent an average of 113 minutes per day on TikTok" accounting for 1/4 of all Americans using it. Hard to get an accurate number, but I'll bet TikTok knows it.
I just bought a couple pair of Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville moccasin style shoes, to replace the ones that I've had for about five years and whose soles are wearing out. Buy one, get one 50% off at Rack Room, for a total of about $130.
Made by happy, well-paid elves in China.
I try not to buy too much Chinee product but these are among the best shoes I've ever owned; practically my only exposure to TT is when something is presented here, since I don't own or intend to acquire a smartphone.
It would be a good idea in general to keep China as a supplier of low- and recreation-tech at low prices until they or we collapse. The China-centric EV and other so-called Green technologies are a scam, of course, aided and abetted by many in this country.
If the American Uniparty wants to ban Tik-Tok, I don't trust them. They have shown and unhealthy love of censorship in the last three years.
After they ban Tik-Tok, what platform comes next??
Even for all the looney tunes on Tik-Tok, the green haired, nose ringed, non-binary public school teachers grooming this generation of American Children has been completely exposed. Exposed because the communicated their cause and achievements on...Tik-Tok.
Free speech not only allows you to voice and hear sane opinions, it lets you know the the crazy people around you are doing as well.
Dumb Lefty Mark: "If Dems were smart, they would let the Republican party be the champions of this.
Let this and the book bans in libraries be the lesson the younger generation receives about how the Republican party doesn't understand the modern world or believe in free speech."
Oh, we're back to the "book bans" lies again, are we?
And just why does Dumb Lefty Mark want porn available for kindergarteners? Oh, right. I think we have already clearly established what that was all about.
Groomers.
"Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans."
Big Mike: "Besides guns, you mean."
Cigarettes.
In my opinion, this is an example of someone selling an enemy the rope he will be hung with.
I suspect that part of the problem with Tik Tok ( never have watched and probably won't) is that it is beyond the control of those in government who have been so active - and successful - in censoring and bending the coverage of our home grown social media. It appears that once the government gets a taste of successful censorship it is a hard habit to break. I agree with you that the more speech the better even if it means we have to tune out some of the real a**holes.
Just above "click for more" was the exact kind of editorial interjection I come here for. I don't know for certain but I feel Althouse rarely resorts to italics or exclamation points or any text enhancement in general. She has written about preferring simplicity regarding commas I recall. So this, to me, stood out as an exclamatory italicization from our host worthy of garnering my interest. Once I click for more my hunches will be confirmed or crushed, so let me say now that the media could have been forthcoming about the actual threats posed by Tik-Tok at any time in past couple years when discussion of it and municipal bans were happening all over the place.
But the only mention from old Joe was a mocking of Trump for trying to ban it by ex-o. And then of course he banned it for government use. Ha ha. But where has all the truth-telling government been hiding? Last I heard their reputation equals Pulitzer, who keeps giving prizes for publishing false information as "news."
Experts in election interference told me that U.S. officials’ willingness to publicly communicate about foreign election meddling helped diffuse the risk that it would undermine trust in the 2020 election.
I've gone back to watching some YouTubes of lectures given on the history of WWI from the WWI Centennial. I saw one last night that flipped up a picture taken in late 1917 of a group of Americans captured by the Germans. The lecturer noted that the photo had been widely disseminated in Germany in an attempt to convince the German public that Americans weren't supermen. The lecturer then noted that the German public immediately noticed the Americans in the picture were young, well-fed, generally a head taller than their captors, clad in heavy full-length greatcoats, and obviously the vanguard of more forces.
You know what happens when you tell people that a credible threat of foreign interference in our elections exists? They start to believe that foreign nations influence our elections.
The Tik-Tok dude was well-prepared and slippery and most questions were dumb and gave him huge leeway to avoid their clumsy gotchas. The only bright spots were him admitting his family were in Singapore so we know everything he said is absolutely CCP approved and him pretending he would let his children use it if they lived here. "It" clearly referred to the chinese version of the app not the one he is using on our children.
"And yet you say our officials know how to talk to us. It wasn't successful talk. In 2020, as in 2016, Americans on the losing side had doubts about the integrity of the election."
Wow, that is a whopper of a sentence.
2016: By all credible accounts, including every U.S. intelligence service, the Russians (especially; there may have been others) attempted to interfere in the U.S. election. Hacking into DNC emails and then releasing them to cause confusion and dissention within the party. Back channel communications with Paul Manafort. Meetings with Don Jr.
Etc., etc.
Trump won the election, narrowly, with candidate Clinton conceding the election within 24 hours. The Obama Administration cooperated in an orderly and mostly-normal transition of power. The Congress certified the electoral college vote. There were some stray efforts at recounts and other legal processes; almost none of them were initiated by the Clinton campaign. (For instance in Michigan, it was the Green Party, which got more votes than the Trump margin of victory, that asked for, and then gave up on, a recount.)
And of course 2016 was the election where Donald Trump, through his lawyers and connected friends running the National Enquirer, paid off a Playmate and a porn star to keep them quiet through the election. Acts which are now the subject of a criminal investigation, and which may well have been critical to preserving Trump's narrow victory.
Hillary Clinton, after promptly conceding the election, attended the Trump inauguration. If there were any serious "doubts" about the 2016 election, those doubts were about how Trump achieved his electoral victory. There were no serious doubts about whether there had been a Trump victory.
2020: Trump lost. His campaign and allies filed dozens of meritless lawsuits. Fox News and other far-right media promoted false and even bizarre theories about voting machine irregularities and other supposed election fraud. State Republican-led investigations in Arizona and Michigan found no fraud or other wrongdoing that would have changed votes or results. The Fox News lies -- lies which many Fox News staff themselves thought were laughable -- are now the subject of what may be the most remarkable media defamation lawsuit in American history. In the meantime, Trump himself has never stopped his campaign of insane lying about the election. Claiming that he won in "a landslide." Claiming that "there were more votes than voters in Detroit." Claiming that "thousands" of votes were cast for "dead people" in Georgia. Listing all of the Trump election lies would blow the character-limit for this page.
Trump left Washington and did not attend the Biden inauguration, still claiming that it was a "stolen" election.
Oh; and something happened on January 6. Something about a Trump rally on the Ellipse, that led to a riot at the Capitol, that even featured a scene where staffers from Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson's office were trying to hand to Vice President Pence documents featuring the signatures of state Republican officials falsely claiming to be presidential electors. All of which is now the subject of multiple additional criminal investigations.
If Americans have doubts about the 2020 election, and whether Biden actually won, it is because those Americans are lost in an enclosed world of Trumpist media. And my first order of business is to make certain that those people fail in their hopes to elect similarly-oriented officials. After that work is done, then I might worry about those poor deluded shitheads' feelings. And how to respond to "doubts" about the 2020 election.
Achilles is correct- this is being pushed by the American social media giants to eliminate some competition. This government no longer represents me- I consider it an enemy.
I don't buy into the belief that TikTok is necessarily any better than the other platforms which are now imitating its format (YouTube, FB, etc.) ... YouTube Shorts, for me at least, is a lot easier to deal with than TikTok for that sort of thing.
If it's true that TT can-and-does internally force that which trends, and that which does not, this seems like a big problem for an app whose developers are beholden to the Chinese gov't.
But, that said, I can't see how an outright ban is going to be workable thing. Information yearns to be free, as the old saying goes, and software is information.
"not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans"
Gas stoves? Oh, not quite yet, that one's still hatching.
It's not the data, it's the influence.
But I did see a part of the testimony.
It was claimed that the CCP never requested nor were given data.
OK.
How about just having it on a server and letting the CCP pore over it whenever they chose?
The national security state is going after Tik Tok for two reasons. One, it is the only social media platform (except for now, Twitter), that they don’t control. Two, it is stealing all the ad revenue away from Facebook and Google, major donors to the Democratic Party.
"Also, any company of any size in China has on-site party cadres that monitor the company."
So do we. It is called the Director of DEI and all of her minions.
Re: Edmund:
The issue is simple: Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company. They are required under Chinese law to cooperate with Chinese intelligence.
So, the Chinese government could ask for all the data on any user and the company has to comply. They collect all kinds of data - locations, use patterns, etc.
This is the mirror image of why the Chinese government bans (or at least has banned -- I haven't been to China in years and I don't know what is currently restricted by the Great Firewall) services like Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Line, and Kakaotalk.
It's not that these companies are unwilling to cooperate with Chinese censorship about things like Tiananmen Square or whatever -- if anything, the big American tech companies have repeatedly demonstrated to the Chinese government that they are quite eager to engage in censorship if it gets them access to the gigantic Chinese market. Nor, I think, is it that they just want to promote home-grown alternatives like Baidu, etc. South Korea doesn't restrict access to Google (although I am pretty sure it could -- it does have a robust internet censorship capability), but home-grown Naver remains more popular than Google in Korea, and users are fickle.
Rather, China probably bans/banned those services because those companies collect the kind of personalised data which could then be accessed by US government agencies and mined to infer sensitive information about what's going on within China. It makes perfect sense for China -- which rationally anticipates serious conflict with the United States some time in the future -- to restrict access to those types of applications. Just as it makes perfect sense for the US -- which rationally anticipates the same -- to ban Chinese applications in turn.
But this, in turn, tells us what's likely to happen if we ban these applications -- lots of Americans are just going to get VPN applications to circumvent those kinds of restrictions, especially if Tiktok just lets people clone their accounts back onto Douyin. And because our government is (I would hope) unlikely to attempt a comprehensive crackdown against VPNs, I think our ban is going to be much less effective than any Chinese ban against services from American companies.
Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans."
Besides guns, you mean.
I thought it was gas stoves...
HOW do they propose to ban tik tok? Institute a national firewall like China has? Remove entries from domestic DNS servers (again how? DNS replicates automatically). This is all just distraction. How can they ban constitutionally protected speech?
Big Mike said...
"Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans."
Besides guns, you mean.
**************
Or gas stoves in kitchens.
So, the Chinese government could ask for all the data on any user and the company has to comply. They collect all kinds of data - locations, use patterns, etc. Most troubling, they have a keylogger built into the program that could record every keystroke, allowing access to passwords, etc. (They assure us it is only used for debugging and troubleshooting. Yeah, sure.) Also, any company of any size in China has on-site party cadres that monitor the company.
It's unsurprising there's a bipartisan move to ban TikTok, what it does is really quite sinister. Really quite sinister. Imagine if a private company coordinated with the US government to share data on US citizens and government used it to monitor citizen's communications and controlled what they could see and hear and even censored them...
Imagine.
(filed under They cant do that to our pledges only we can do that to our pledges)
"'Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans.'
"Besides guns, you mean."
That's in your fevered imagination. It has never even been suggested that guns as a category of product be banned. There are some who have advocated that certain types of guns be prohibited to sale to the general public. This is an entirely different discussion...and such a prohibition of these types of guns will never happen. (I suspect the pro-gun/anti-abortion crowd calculate the proliferation of military-style weapons will kill enough Americans to offset the excess births that anti-abortion laws will produce.)
Just have Joe give his word, as a Biden, this is necessary to thwart Putin and reduce climate change.
Then KJP can say the White House is no longer focused on the issue.
That should do it.
Zuck paid $500m to install Joe. Meta has taken a hit. The Chinese haven’t paid Joe nearly enough. TikTok gets banned.
The US government objection to TikTok is not about what TikTok does, but who they do it for.
As the Twitter Files have shown us, American Officials have gained content control over all the major social media platforms. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to accomplish this with full cooperation of the companies they now control, including infiltrating a surprising number of government assets directly into the employ of these companies. I'm sure they don't like TikTok being an exception and the companies who have bent the knee don't like it either.
Edited cross-post/re-post from locals, Marginal Revolution and probably here sometime in the recent past. I haven't heard anybody address this, though I haven't followed it closely...
It is insufficient to refer to tiktok as an app. There is a tiktok app(that I wouldn't install on any device in a million years). There is also tiktok.com that serves pretty much the same data. After the gov does whatever they decide to do, what will happen when I type tiktok.com into my browser address bar (which I do on occasion), or when following a link or when viewing a page that has a tiktok video embedded. I don't want the gov to think that blocking that is an OK thing. Referring to tiktok as an app unless you're specifically talking about the app and not the website is ambiguous and maybe even deceptive. I would love some clarification on this. What do some people want the gov to ban? An app? The route to tiktok.com? Will US citizens get busted for possession of a banned app? Will google play store or some side-loading app website get busted for intent to deliver?
tiktok.com doesn't require an account. It's just a website.
There are web pages that do get blocked or taken over by the gov and that's for doing something that is already illegal. IANAL but am assuming there is a court order or some kind of injunction involved. The gov should not be able to ban one particular website by name unless there is an established law that is being broken and due process is followed. That law would apply to all, not just tiktok.
Edmund said...
The issue is simple: Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company. They are required under Chinese law to cooperate with Chinese intelligence.
So, the Chinese government could ask for all the data on any user and the company has to comply. They collect all kinds of data - locations, use patterns, etc. Most troubling, they have a keylogger built into the program that could record every keystroke, allowing access to passwords, etc. (They assure us it is only used for debugging and troubleshooting. Yeah, sure.) Also, any company of any size in China has on-site party cadres that monitor the company.
Google, ATT, Facebook, Verizon et al have the same relationship with the DC Regime in this country.
Please tell me what the difference is between tik tok and google is beyond the who/whom stuff and level of success.
For that matter tell us what the difference is between the Biden Regime and the Chinese Regime is beyond the who/whom stuff and level of success.
The only precedent this sets is that if you become a competitor to a US tech company the government can call you a threat and block US users. The US government doesn't care about companies abusing data, facebook still exists after the cambridge analytica scandal. They care about foreign companies challenging tech monopolies in the US.
It's easy to agree with this proposal if you only see it as involving tiktok, which is exactly why it's being called a "tiktok ban".
Of course, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop this.
I'm not sure I am more worried about communist China having my personal info than the Biden regime. Which is more dangerous to personal security ?
I'm not sure I am more worried about communist China having my personal info than the Biden regime. Which is more dangerous to personal security ?
I'm not sure I am more worried about communist China having my personal info than the Biden regime. Which is more dangerous to personal security ?
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers says giving TikTok the ability to provide content to US children is "like allowing the Soviet Union to produce Saturday morning cartoons during the Cold War."
This seems easy enough to understand.
"Old and slow said...
HOW do they propose to ban tik tok? Institute a national firewall like China has? Remove entries from domestic DNS servers (again how? DNS replicates automatically). This is all just distraction. How can they ban constitutionally protected speech?"
Exactly!
It can be done (apparently, they can try, if this AI know what it's talking about) (subverting that is one handy use for VPN's)
Why not have a general anti-surveillance statute applicable to all social media platforms?
they've already stolen all the data, and corrupted the yoots, whats next,
Influence, inference, even steering. America has two domestic fronts and so many more special and peculiar interests. I suppose we could not afford a transnational third.
"Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is"
Not a fan of Murdoch. Still subscribe to WSJ. Not a fan of Musk. Still have Twitter App. No fan of CCP. Still have Tiktok App. Draw the line at Facebook.
The problem isn't the site; it's the app. So people could still access its content.
Cookie: "That's in your fevered imagination. It has never even been suggested that guns as a category of product be banned."
LOL
I'm not in favor of banning the app, but keep in mind the ol' rule: "Don't trust China. China is asshoe."
"I suspect that part of the problem with Tik Tok...is that it is beyond the control of those in government who have been so active - and successful - in censoring and bending the coverage of our home grown social media."
Those in which government? The US or China?
rehajm said...
Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans."
Besides guns, you mean.
I thought it was gas stoves...
3/24/23, 11:55 AM
Don't forget gas powered cars and air conditioning.
"That deserves more protection, not less."
There you go again, being liberal and all.
All of these internet-based apps are data-mining and gathering information about their users. And if the Twitter files showed anything, it's that US-based companies work closely with the US gov't, sometimes because they have to and sometimes because they decide to. It's a safe bet that the same is true everywhere and that some places do it with more sinister objectives in mind than others (CCP, here's looking at you). All of that may be a good reason to prohibit gov't employees from using gov't resources to connect with these apps. But as for the rest of us, it's just grounds to issue whatever warning may seem right and then leave it up to individual users.
Let this and the book bans in libraries be the lesson the younger generation receives about how the Republican party doesn't understand the modern world or believe in free speech.
Groomer says, what?
Tim Wu was the government until mid-January, what did he do to explain to the public?
Cook,
What is a military-style weapon?
You do know that fully automatic weapons are illegal for most citizens to own.
Cyclomate.
Look speaking as someone who's been working in IT for the threat of tiktok is not that it's somehow an attack surface on it's own. The questions they're asking the CEO like "Can tiktok access the local wifi networks?" are absurd, and pointless - there are so many possible way to get into people's wifi and so little point in doing so that it's not worth worrying about.
The issue we should be concerned about is algorithmic attack. It's becoming more and more clear that social media is a net negative impact on people's mental health. Mental illness via social contagion is a thing. Look at all the people who started picking up facial tics, convinced themselves they have Tourettes syndrome, the explosion in Trans, Gender non-conforming, etc. (Not a thing I have a problem with, but it's hard not to think that at least some of the increase is attributable to social media trends.) It seems to me that letting the CCP put their thumb on this lever is a bad idea. We know for a fact that the algorithms for mainland China and the US are different.
The WaPo comment at the end of the post completely misses the point - on how many issues do you see agreement from both the Ds and the Rs?? I can't think of anything. Certainly not anything that should be as controversial as this. Movement on this issue has been surprisingly quick. My guess is that there's intelligence showing that the CCP has been getting up to some hijinks with tiktok and both parties are fairly freaked out. Keep in mind that we also recently (and suddenly) locked China out of access to high-end GPUs, which are a key part of advanced AIs, started putting resources into building more domestic chip fabs, and if you haven't seen the study Microsoft published on GPT4, you should check it out. It's called "Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence" - a title that should chill your spine, given how little we understand how these systems work.
The app is safe and effective.
Tik Tok is for girls and gays.
Let them enjoy their mental disintegration in peace
Achilles said: For that matter tell us what the difference is between the Biden Regime and the Chinese Regime is beyond the who/whom stuff and level of success.
*********************
OK, how 'bout this: based on his internet history, China threatens a worker in a US defense industry to provide classified information about the latest-generation B-21 bomber, or be exposed for his kiddie porn collection.
Could the Biden Regime do that? Seek to learn our national security secrets?
Banning Tiktok would be like banning a brand of whiskey, not like banning all alcohol.
Robert Cook said...
"'Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans.'
"Besides guns, you mean."
That's in your fevered imagination. It has never even been suggested that guns as a category of product be banned. There are some who have advocated that certain types of guns be prohibited to sale to the general public. This is an entirely different discussion...and such a prohibition of these types of guns will never happen. (I suspect the pro-gun/anti-abortion crowd calculate the proliferation of military-style weapons will kill enough Americans to offset the excess births that anti-abortion laws will produce.)
Don't lie. Of course they have. That is the end game of gun control. Politicians promoting it have said as much.
Was this the only Supreme Court case in which the plaintiff was not present to argue their case?
I can't think of a better spying device to keep tabs on the populations in America and elsewhere in the off chance that China is eventually planning to become the dominant world power. The app is free, it's entertaining, it's addictive.
'Why not have a general anti-surveillance statute applicable to all social media platforms?'
You should have to explicitly opt-in to any data collection.
Other than the lobbyists for tech companies, this should not be controversial...
Maynard said...
"Cook,
"What is a military-style weapon?"
Scary ones. IE Anything that shoots.
"You do know that fully automatic weapons are illegal for most citizens to own."
Ant American citizen can own a class 3 weapon, a machine gun. Providing it's legal in your state. Here in Illinois you have to be a corporation.
You will need.
A clean record.
Two passport type photos.
Two fingerprint cards from your local sheriff.(He'll keep one)
Complete the application to the ATFE.
Pay a 200 dollar tax. It is a stamp that comes when the ATFE returns your paperwork.
You need to do this for each class3 weapon. The paperwork must always accompany the firearm and has to presented to the ATFE on demand.
If you're buying an M3 "Grease Gun" expect to shell out between 15 and 20 thousand. This is for a gun that cost the government less than $5.00.
Always assumer it's loaded and always make sure of your backstop.
Have fun.
""Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans.""
I thought they were talking about menthol cigarettes.
"The GQP also figured out that most everyone under 40 hate them and are using TikTok to mobilize and organize against them, not to mention educate the youth on topics like racism and sexual identity that the GQP is trying desperately to ban, so TT must be banned."
Once the grandstanding is over, this is why TikTok will not actually be banned. It is far too useful to the Democrats as a "get out the vote" tool.
Plus, TikTok owns the young, single, female demographic on social media. Democrats generally try very hard to avoid saying "no" to young, single, females.
For some reason, I equate TicToc to the testicle-kicking programming that Frito Pendejo was watching in the movie Idiocracy. Anyone that enjoys an/or allows their children to enjoy content such as this deserves to be Darwin-ed, regardless of the security concerns.
Tik Tok is the means. Social Credit is the end.
This would probably be a good time to talk about the evils of government-enforced social credit, and the fascistic use of and participation of the big tech corporations to implement it.
The average person thinks the problem is that they use the "data" to sell you stuff you don't want. Or that kids spend too much time watching stupid stuff. That ain't the problem.
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