Every post that had an embedded TikTok video now looks empty like that and is missing its point. Every post where I linked to anything on TikTok has been turned — forcibly, by our government — into something that would not be posted.
I watched a lot of TikTok yesterday, so I saw how many many TikTok creators were saying goodbye to the audience they had drawn in over the years, and now, this morning, I'm seeing mainstream media articles about how these last goodbyes sounded. The NYT has the headline "In TikTok’s Final Hours, a Mix of Silliness and Sadness." And that headline made me angry, because I didn't see "silliness." I saw sadness, but the other thing I saw was outright anger — anger at the American government for shutting down a medium of free individual speech that was an important part of life for tens of millions of Americans. Even if much of TikTok could be labeled "silly," even silly speech matters — seriously — when the government comes and takes it away.
পোস্টগুলি
১২২টি মন্তব্য:
I think this is similar to how millions of Americans felt when they were censored, shadow-banned, or demonetized by Youtube, the old Twitter, reddit, etc. Only there weren't any articles in the MSM bemoaning their plights, or even acknowledging that it was happening.
I'm kinda sad to see Rand Paul jump on the silly 'censorship' bandwagon. If there was ever a case that cried out for somebody to recognize the massive violation of property rights (and not just ByteDance's) that is happening here, this one is it.
I suppose there’s one thing the government can get together on: sticking it to The People.
AA : Think of all the time the ban frees-up for other things. No worries, tho, The Trumpster will more than likely ride to the rescue...
Everything the Chinese government choose to close off rather than sell their intelligence asset to an outlet they don’t control could be reposted in a day on any of a half-dozen alternative sites that aren’t controlled by a hostile government.
Note to Self: There is an alternative to TikTok. It's called Get A Life.
Their attorneys should have tried the Holes-In-The-Blog defense just to rattle the scotuses…
TikTok owner shutting the site down doesn't appear to be economically rational. I wonder why that's the path its owner chose.
After some thought, I decided not to end the last sentence with a question mark.
Government takes away something women like, so there's outrage. Think white male for the last 40 years.
Seems like our President to Be (if he survives his own inauguration) might be pulling off a deal to keep it going. He likes free speech too. Just not the Communist kind.
Every government will control the platforms available in its country, says Scott Adams.
"Their attorneys should have tried the Holes-In-The-Blog defense just to rattle the scotuses…"
The argument is that a vast amount of expressive work has been undisplayed by action of our government.
I just watched Rand Paul on Tik-tok through your blog so a rare win for Canada there.
Am I supposed to feel more secure now? Not sure that I do. Govt Censorship is a bad idea.
My biggest problem is that it wasn't shut down years ago but this is nothing compared to when the Chinese sell cheap self-driving cars with multiple internet connected sensors driving around the US including military bases, industrial sites and transportation hubs.
Our own government collects all our info! How can they scoff at China? FB, X, Google, etc. are world-wide as well…. Just saying. Goose and gander.
There’s a hole in the blog, dear Nancy, dear Nancy
There’s a hole in the blog, dear Nancy
There’s a hole
Then fix it dear Sonya, dear Sonya, dear Sonya
Then fix it dear Sonya, dear Sonya fix it
So the democrats took away tik tok. Will anyone call them on it. Because all I hear is “the government”. No not “the government”. The democrat government.
Biden’s final act of censorship will be his legacy. His son can do hookers, blow, throw guns in trash bins next to schools, not pay taxes, and get a little extra for the big guy. You can’t watch short videos, because it is bad for you.
As others have said, this is on the Dems. In addition, if the government would share at least a synopsis of the classified evidence I think this would probably sit better with most.
OK, I'll be the one to ask the question: What exactly is the national security threat here?
Everyone already uses numerous Chinese-made products (iPhones, computers, etc). Why is this app such a "security" threat that it must be forcibly shut down by law-plus-SCOTUS action?
The worst part is the hypocrisy, not the raping…
I don’t see the unique security threat. I wonder if a vpn tunneling to the UK would allow someone to continue with TikTok? If so, what’s the point?
Why is this on the Dems? My GOP governor and legislature thought the ban was a good idea too. I thought they were one of the petitioners. Bipartisanship, baby!
Now what about all the other platforms? It was Tumblr got all the trans insanity going with teens but it wasn't banned
Bumblepuppy, are you saying that the Althouse blog isn't full of holes for you? I've read that it's only TikTok accounts created in America that are blocked.
Nowadays we say Go Touch Grass, which is used ironically because every aspect of our lives involves looking at screens. Watching sportsball on TV, reading a Kindle novel, checking the Althouse blog ...
With what should I fix it, dear Nancy, dear Nancy,
With what should I fix it, dear Nancy, with what?
With emanations from penumbras, dear Sonya, dear Sonya,
With emanations from penumbras, dear Sonya, emanations from penumbras
China brought us to our knees and it was this easy. We're a great country filled with weak and shallow people.
There's various reasons to bar Tiktok, but I think the propaganda rationale is comparatively weak. The datamining rationale is more compelling to me -- similar, I think, to the Chinese government's policy restricting access to internet services domiciled in hostile foreign powers. Diplomatic and military personal devices pinging into Tiktok servers (or for China, Facebook or Instagram or whatever) from unexpected locations is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the security risk a foreign-controlled app could pose.
That said, other Chinese social media platforms like Wechat, QQ, and Douyin (original Tiktok) aren't barred, are they? Not sure what the rationale for singling out Tiktok is -- I imagine the other services also aggressively collect and track user data, because why wouldn't they?
I watched an interesting video this morning showing the increase in the demand to ban Tik-Tok after a study came out indicating for each 30 minutes watching Tik-Tok videos, there was a 17% increase in support for Palestians and anger against Israel. I don't know if that study was valid but suddenly politicians started quoting the study and then the bill was introduced to ban the app.
What happened on Oct 7 sickens me and I think the terrorists should be punished. However, banning speech is not the way to change people's minds.
a vast amount of expressive work has been undisplayed by action of our government.
I infer that you agree with Justice Sotomayor: the Court should have held that the Act implicates the First Amendment rather than assuming-without-deciding. But do you also concur in her concurrence in the judgment?
With a joint resolution dear Nancy, dear Nancy
With a joint resolution, dear Nancy, joint resolution
It won’t hurt Trump, dear Sonya, dear Sonya
It won’t hurt Trump, dear Sonya, hurt Trump
So far, I see the following possible reasons being offered for justifying the forcible shutdown:
1) Acquisition and aggressive tracking of user data. (That reason would justify shutting down Google and Amazon too. And what's the security threat of kids' toy or video interests, or grandma's coordinates?)
2) Selective location tracking of our military or government personnel. (Easy. Have a policy forbidding sensitive personnel from having or using the app. And forbid them from having iPhones, Lenovo laptops, solar panels on their homes, or anything from Costco.)
3) Broad dissemination of pro-Palestinian or other dangerous propaganda including communist ideology. (Wow. This totally justifies the shutting down of the Democrat Party, as well as the NY Times, WaPo, CBSNBCABCNPR. I'm beginning to see the possibilities.)
…a vast amount of expressive work has been undisplayed by action of our government.
The same can be said about the fires in LA County.
I'm absolutely sure that the reason tick tock was taken out is because it was so crazy hyper viral popular. That makes the action Uber controversial with lots of clicks. It's the same reason why the IRS always goes after celebrities before April 15th.
Okay, but maybe don’t lead with It hurts the aesthetics…
How did we go from needing a constutional amendment to ban alcohol in this country to simply having congress 'ban all the things'? 100 Watt lightbulbs, gas stoves, ICE cars and Tik Tok. What wonderful future will our government let us have 20 years from now?
We have to become what we are carefully taught to hate because otherwise the people in charge might lose their phony baloney jobs.
Remember the experiment where a reporter blocked every IP that belonged to Google, and despite never signing up for Google, their computer didn't work? I worry a lot more about Google following me around and reporting on me to the government, than the ChiComs.
Of course nobody born in the last 20 years or even 30, can ever run for office without Google knowing every single fact about them, all of their searches, tastes in p*rn, kompromat that gives Google the power to control our government, just like Epstein's list, except at national scale.
What happens if you pick a Canadian VPN site?
This is the point. All that ANGER is misdirected. The Chinese government chose to exit this market rather than comply with US law and transfer ownership to virtually anyone other than their own spy agency. Just like the Chinese made the initial choice to make TikTok the most invasive spyware program ever released and disguise it as a harmless playful app.
TikTok gives an adversarial government the ability to datamine a huge number of Americans. The users don't mind being passive spies for the CCP, because some content producers are making money and everyone gets to watch funny videos.
I'm not sure why Rand Paul decided to jump on this bandwagon.
That TikTok won't sell or stop datamining is sufficient evidence. There are plenty of alternative platforms.
Intent.
And of course our government can access the cabin microphone in your car, whatever you say around your phone, the camera facing you in your TV, etc, etc, etc. We live in the prequel to 1984.
Read almost any discussion of it here including yesterday's. I've spelled it out over and over.
I wonder why people are moaning about their lost content. Did they think they had ownership of it? Is the 'proof to the contrary' sufficient? The US Government didn't shut down TikTok, China did. They OWN it, and decide who is allowed to use it. And they OWN the data they mine from your devices as well, even though you might not be aware of the extent of what they have captured.
Users can't claim ownership of their TikTok content any more than I can claim ownership of the parking space I use downtown. The difference is, the government is not free to take what they please from my truck bed, while it's parked there.
Hopefully this will trigger a change in the way people comprehend their data footprint, and its value with respect to privacy - but I doubt it.
This is from a Slate article:
"And the information that TikTok collects from users is vast: It includes “age, phone number, precise location, internet address, device used, phone contacts, social network connections,” and content of private messages, as well as “data stored in the user’s contact list, including names, contact information, contact photos, job titles, and notes.” Congress worried that this data would enable China “to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.” TikTok could, in short, be easily transformed into “an espionage tool,” permitting the Chinese Communist Party to spy on 170 million Americans."
Work productivity and academic performance will increase measurably.
It's like the Viet Nam War, you never hear how the Democrats started it, escalated it, and Nixon ended it. No, in the popular mind, after decades of balls to the wall propaganda from movies, TV, etc, it was "Nixon's war." Only the people alive at the time remember the "Hey, hey! LBJ!" chant, with the one exception I can think of of "Forest Gump."
The other apps do not install keyloggers on your devices for one.
Any app that you choose to install puts that same data into private hands controlled by billionaires who often need favors from governments around the world.
1. I clicked on the Rand Paul link. Very smart of TikTok to issue the following statement:
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
Advice to President Trump: “free speech, bro, free speech”.
2. On a separate and equally unsettling note: Tulsi Gabbard has caved and now supports FISA-702
3. On a personal note: I stopped watching TikTok videos when I first noticed an increased desire to buy watermelons (in support of the Palestinians)
4. Spell check no longer completes the name TikTok for you.
This is a sop to Israel. TikTok showed that there were people on the receiving end of all of those American supplied bombs. Oh, I forgot, the video of the victims of those bombs is all made up lies. Bombs don't actually kill people, just sort of express outrage, like a physical manifestation of a sternly worded letter. My bad.
I am nor ever have been on TikTok. So I have no skin in the game. As a bystander, I understand the conflict. Homeland security vs freedom of speech. Whether this decision was an "executive order" or Congressional action. I feel the decision by SCOTUS was not Whether it was a good idea to shutter. But Whether the process of action was legal. Congress and Presidents can do stupid "legal" things and very often do! Professor, am I wrong?
While the "government" had control of Twitter and all other social media, it couldn't control TikTok. That's why they had to ban it. And, as that train picked up speed they couldn't stop it and here we are. X (Twitter) is free from control, along with Facebook. How long before Google/YouTube are censorship free? Maybe never. They may be too ideologically bound up to ever be free. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.
What is it with you somewhat-left-of-center people that you are simply mentally incapable of wrapping your head around genuine privacy and information security issues? That neither you nor Hillary Clinton nor “Pudding Brains” Biden get it doesn’t make it less real.
All the blue haired male-to-female cosplaying librarian groomers said the same thing when livejournal went down...
Taking down TikTok punched a hundred holes in my blog.
I believe I heard it from Carl Sagan (Cosmos TV show?) that a black hole is so dense you could drop a tablespoon full of it and it would punch its way through the Earth and out the other side until gravity pulled it back and this process would continue until the Earth resembled a giant Swiss cheese.
Even if I'm misremembering that very much it's still kind of a nifty idea.
I am with you on this one Ann. Big government over reach. American owned companies can do just as much or more spying as anyone else. My trust in our government is not much better than that of the China.
@ Mike. "Intent". Regarding the intent of China versus our own government to gather and disburse internet data, which one has sown the most discord within our own society over the past 8-9 years? Just asking for a friend.
Ann Althouse was OK with that censorship because it was her side doing it.
For some it's software bans, for others it's [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] mmigration reform, labor/environmental/monetary arbitrage, hate crimes, Green deals, shared responsibility through progressive prices, Loving without love, DEI (e.g. institutional racism, sexism), etc. that limit expression.
But then Althouse has to actually write something articulate in order to get clicks.
"...a black hole is so dense you could drop a tablespoon full of it and it would punch its way through the Earth and out the other side until gravity pulled it back and this process would continue..."
Decades ago I read a novel in which that was happening.
I don't remember the title or author or much of the plot beyond that. I think there was an attempt to use giant super-powerful magnets to slow the black hole down and capture it to use as an energy source/superweapon.
Oh, please. This is not a free speech crisis. There is nothing anyone could say yesterday that can't be said today.
That's the problem in a nutshell: internal, external, and mutual consistency, or the lack thereof. It's a modern religion like the ancient cults before contemporary religions moderated their range and divergence.
"... a hundred holes in my blog."
Plant a seed in every hole and let a hundred flowers bloom.
"And of course our government can access the cabin microphone....
But aren't the questions: Which do you prefer? Which do you have more control over? What else would you like an adversarial nations to have free access to? What would cause you to believe they don't already have it?
@Mike (MJB Wolf) - ok. Let’s assume the Chines know EVERYTHING about me! Down to keystrokes and how often I scratch my nuts. Where is the threat to national security? Will the government collapse if the Chinese know I like Texas football and Japanese porn?
@Mike (MJB Wolf) - ok. Let’s assume the Chines know EVERYTHING about me! Down to keystrokes and how often I scratch my nuts. Where is the threat to national security? Will the government collapse if the Chinese know I like Texas football and Japanese porn?
I wonder if this is how Melania felt after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and ripped through her underwear drawer. I also wonder why the brainiacs in our government can’t figure out a way to turn TikTok against the Chinese.
I guess I'm the one person who's never gone onto tiktok. There's enough to see on the web, and i never had that much time for mindless scrolling.
Do you remember a time when you thought, "If it's on the Internet, it's there forever"? Now, no one thinks that anymore.
This is projection by our ruling cabal. They accused Trump of being that which we funded Navalny to be, a foreign trojan horse to undermine democracy. Projection. We use social media to overthrow governments all the time. We are trying to overthrow the elected government in Georgia just like we did in Kiev. Look at how we now have an unelected dictator in charge in Romania because we accused Russia of meddling in their elections through TikTok, and the investigation showed that it was a domestic party who paid for the TikTok campaign, not Russia, and they did it to hopefully bleed votes from an opponent; doesn't matter, election is still nullified. They have a serious problem there in that the anti war candidate is very likely to win if they allow the election to continue, so they simply suspended elections "to protect democracy."
People do resent the loss of content. After years of posting on Instapundit, one morning I was de-platformed without warning. Completely removed with no explanation. I wrote to Glenn Reynolds and got no reply. My opinion of him was greatly reduced.
"a medium of free individual speech" There are many others. How about we make a deal with the Chinese: TikTok continues here, in exchange for a similar American-made app having unrestricted access to he Chinese public. What's that? No deal? Why?
I’m old enough to remember when government action that led to speech removal was called censorship.
Love your No. 3!
That post gets to the heart of it. Take a moment to count the number of things that have affected you that have been banned or modified by the Gum'it. More than 3? More than five or ten?
The Chinese COMMUNIST Party did this. All they had to do was sell it. They are our ENEMY. Why support our enemy? This post is, respectfully, nuts.
This headline and post are part of the unfortunate Boomer tradition of "sure there is widespread disaster but look how this has affected my blog." Well it affects all of us, and it was using the oldest known exploit in the hacking world: social engineering. Humans are the weak point in ANY security environment.
IF YOU STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY TIKTOK WAS SO EVIL, READ CAREFULLY:
Sure our sitting Treasury Secretary had her dedicated laptop hacked by the Chinese version of the CIA, along with the entire Treasure Department system; and during the campaign you may recall that https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/25/trump-hack-china-phones-00185608">phones used by Trump and Vance campaign were hacked by the ChiComs, and there were a few reports of the same with Harris's campaign; and every major corporation, MGM Resorts and AT&T and Microsoft had their data stolen by the Chinese. Not to mention the many credible reports of infrastructure like dams and electricity substations and ships and bridges, things you wouldn't expect even have an internet connection have been hacked by known Chinese actors.
Every one of us has been affected by now, if not through financial institutions, then by government or commercial entities we do business with, who have been hacked. It's so pervasive that in the first five months of 2024 there were "5,136,645,282 known records breached so far in 2,098 publicly disclosed incidents," according to an IT Governance report. More than FIVE BILLION records breached, before Janet Yellen let them into Treasury.
[continued below]
No, Althouse here is on the side of defending nominally innocent and productive activities despite strong evidence that TikTok functions as a hostile espionage tool. Some people hope to live a happy and peaceful online existence, while others don't care or refuse to admit to the dangers.
This ban follows 30 years of Internet spam, viruses, trojans, fake websites, dating catfishing, password collection software, account hacking, AI Brad Pitt chatbots, simple confidence games, and other times where kind and naive people got burned. This is the core ambiguity of the web as a communication medium -- everything looks kind of the same.
On another front, I was notified that an uncle I never knew existed died in Nigeria and I've inherited $5,000,000US. What a windfall! I need to send them $2,500 to process the paperwork. Should I do it?
[continued]
Every single one of these hacking incidents were possible because humans gave up their passwords, not to some slick talking guy on the phone or a honeypot blackmail scheme, but because they voluntarily opened their entire lives to the master spies of the CCP. Yes the servers are in China, which means users are directly connected to the spymasters. Yes it's addictive, especially to kids, and subtly manipulates users into specific political positions. And yes the damned app copies the stored data, including hard drive if you download it to a PC or laptop, but many people have passwords they don't write down because we are "security conscious."
That's where the keylogging feature of TikTok, which I have harped on almost every time the subject comes up here, is so effective. Whatever device you are using, eventually your input boils down to text generated by keystrokes (although they have a way of accessing text you create via voice-to-text as well). From the moment you type your password to log on the TikTok app is assembling those strings of keystrokes and sending them to Beijing in packets. Every site you visit. Every call you make. Every time you log into a system, even if using a VPN the keylogger dutifully transcribes the URL and your username and password: any banking, any medical records like MyChart, any work related apps like email or payroll (ADT) can be highly useful.
Especially if you are Janet Yellen or the guy who operates the bridge so ships can enter the harbor or a tech with the grid operator or... Well by now you get the picture. All of these myriad hacks in the news are really the story of five billion human exploits where one of us let them in. We didn't do it intentionally. We just thought the app was "fun." And our government had cried "wolf" too many times so we didn't believe their dire warnings. In fact, even after Congress spelled it out and passed a law mandating changes or else, we didn't blame the perp, the ChiCom spies, we blamed our government and stomped our feet like 5-year-olds angry for having the candy bowl put out of reach.
So the Son of a Ron has joined the Chicoms! Time now for the randy one to find a neighbor to punch.
Nominally, we have the opportunity to rein in our own government but not the hostile foreign power in this specific case. Glad you picked up on the ambiguity of such a short reply. So long as the Constitution holds, there's hope for us IMO.
Despite many explanations from many people, @planetgeo simply does not want to believe.
@planetgeo, please read up on espionage techniques:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Espionage_techniques
Not true Jaq. Randomizer is on the right rack with "content of private messages" and I expound on that below. Sorry for the huge blocks of text but people seem confused on this point. I agree every app exploits us to some degree, but some specific differences make TT worse with ownership being he most obvious.
Instead of posting your same arms-crossed objections over and over, please read about classification through the compilation of data. See the link to a 22 page report from 1991 below.
This is an old, old, old topic in espionage. Your isolated data may have little or no value. However, in conjunction with that of your friends, associates, business acquaintances, banks, credit cards, etc. it may have enormous value. As with DNA, you may still have little or no value to a foreign government even after that. Or not. However, a substantial percentage of the US population has data that can be aggregated into a national security nightmare.
https://sgp.fas.org/library/compilations.pdf
Number three wasn't used for a "reason" so much as it was included in an example of how the app responds to current events to sow general dissention. It's not the sole example, but it was recent and provided a stark example of TT users vs non-users, especially children. But yeah, psyops are all around us.
I feel a great disturbance in The Force. As if a hundred holes were punched into Althouse’s blog.
Therefore we MUST STOP USA COMPANIES TOO. Mark Zuckerberg and the former Twitter management team were pure evil.
Death by regulation vs death by statute.
Well do you use your phone to log into a work computer? Are you employed by an entity that is critical (government, infrastructure, financial services, defense, telecoms)? Maybe YOU specifically are not an exploitable interface but millions of Americans and resident aliens can answer "yes" to both of the above. Thanks to Janet Yellen the Chinese have access to everything in the IT system of our Treasury Department. The twin truths of hacking are (1) Humans are the best exploit (social engineering) and (2) Any exploit is a total exploit in the right hands.
Nope. Me either.
Correction: "and during the campaign you may recall that phones used by Trump and Vance campaign were hacked by the ChiComs..."
Nope. Nope. Nope. Trump himself supported a TikTok ban back in 2020. Also see the recent efforts to ban DJI drones and TP-Link internet routers from China. The espionage dimension has been on the back burner for a long time.
Espionage.
I suspect it depends on how the block is set up, log-in IP address or where the account was registered. (I don't have and have no interest in TicToc so I have no way to check)
Of course there are issues with the US government but if you can’t see the difference between the government that is having a transfer of power tomorrow and the CCP, we have nothing to discuss.
The impending psychological disturbances among the millions of deprived TikTok drones will negate this beneficial effect.
Ditto. I get my fill with occasional forays into Instagram and Reels
"I guess I'm the one person who's never gone onto tiktok."
What makes you think that?
Personally, I am parsimonious about putting apps on my devices. I don't want the security risk nor the time sink.
What does it mean to "go onto tiktok"? I've clicked on occasional links posted here that led to videos that are apparently on tiktok but that's about it- I've never signed up for anything or created any kind of an account that I'm aware of.
I'm not a user to Tik-Tok but I am a lover of free speech. It occurs to me that loss of the speech so lamented by the app's users was not actually free, but came with some significant cost. Express the same speech someplace else.
Posted by Kevin Sorbo: Donald Trump on TikTok ban.
Posted by Kevin Sorbo: Donald Trump on TikTok ban.
I went looking for my first comment on Althouse a while ago. I originally posted under a different name (just "Mike"), but I closed that account and opened this one. I was surprised to find that all my comments under "Mike" have disappeared.
I've also noticed that if one changes your avatar, Google goes back and changes it for all your previous posts. Not how I would have written the software.
The TikTok Three Stooges "Susquehanna 2-2-2-2" video I linked to yesterday is still working, evidently because the link uses the TikTok web portal not the app.
Which again raises my original point, is the TikTok app ban a reasonable "time, place, manner" restriction, a content-neutral regulation of software installed on phones, not a restriction on the ability to express oneself on the Internet?
Me too--the only TikTokery I've done is a rare click on one of the Prof's offerings or an equally rare short on YT.
If those little forays mean I've enlisted all unawares, then I'm glad to see TT go (rather than just indifferent, as I have been since the ban/sale was proposed).
Should we declare war on China, and immediately deport all Chinese nationals? Aren’t they always sniffing around our secrets with their bags of money and little yellow honeypots? Declare war and get it over with. Let’s have the real adults deal with the Yellow Peril
So quit posting from Tik Tok...
Everything the chicoms are involved in is rooted in data collection, spying, and/or theft of intellectual property . Everything. The chicoms are our enemy. That so many here who don't and won't understand this. Gullibility isn't an excuse. Keep in mind all of the security breaches over the past few years. Janet Yellen, the idiot secretary of the treasury had her office computer compromised. All perpetrated by the chicoms or their proxies. The disinterest
about this is disturbing at the least. And fools are upset because they can't post drivel to an app that vacuums up every bit of personal data and installs malware to access more. You folks are sheep. Good grief, get a grip.
Enigma- please name the foreign entity and their acts which have caused a fraction of the harm to the nation that our own government has going back to say, 1960.
It was "free" to download and use, right?
I'm curious why this ban was not an unconstitutional bill of attainder (a law directed at only one person). Apparently the TikTok lawyers never made that argument, though, so it must be lacking in some way.
Well, Oso, you asked what the NatSec threat was. Did you get a satisfactory answer?
Trump at one time tried to ban TikTok and has since reversed his position on the app ... after meeting with Trump donor Jeff Yass (Susquehanna International Group) who owns 15% of ByteDance. Yass will consider it a promissory note that became due after Trump won. The MAGA's who bought in to "America First" will find a way to justify Trump's flip to support TikTok too.
Did you read the bill? My understanding is the wording was specific to apps with foreign espionage agency ownership. We may learn it applies to more than one app. But certainly TT fit the definition.
I agree. The quality of commentary on this blog is typically far higher. People who don't care about Chinese espionage haven't been paying attention or aren't especially pro-American. I'm sure they have other means of compiling dossiers on American citizens in order to prioritize whom to send embedded kill squads after when the shooting starts, but why make it easier for them?
These first amendment arguments have all the intellectual persuasion of You can’t go- all the plants will die!!!
I think even the Supreme Court recognized the selection of a deadline just before Inauguration Day was to generate this kind of bullshit talking points. Harris would be doing the same things Trump is because the point of the exercise is to get TicToc under the control of a US entity. The Harris administration would be absolutely salivating over the censorship and datamining opportunities presented by getting TicToc under their thumb the way they had Facebook and Twitter.
You changed to topic to something irrelevant. Have a nice day in random thought land.
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