U.S. House of Representatives votes to ban TikTok

[DelurkedToHelp]

And as you can see below, it's not just Republicans.



Nothing says a fuck you to authoritarian, commie China from the land of the free like...er, banning a mainstream social media platform.

Biden's said he'd sign the bill if it does pass Congress, despite his re-election campaign setting up an TikTok account last month.

https://news.sky.com/story/joe-biden-says-he-would-sign-bill-banning-tiktok-13090624

Trump previously supported a ban but has now come out against it, so it will be interesting to see if the bill does get the 60 votes in the Senate it will need to pass.

[BlodwynPig]

Goodbye to bad news

[Shaxberd]

I foresee a lot of Tiktoks about how to use a VPN.

[Psybro]

Where's the American hosted alternative that makes you eat a burger for every Tik you want to Tok

[convulsivespace]

Racist, demonic shithole.*

(*The U.S. House of Representatives, not TikTok)

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

BOOM blip

[bgmnts]

Twitter is fine though.

[steve98]

What should my opinion (If I have one) on this be?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

but what about me and my incredibly specific fetishes?

[All Surrogate]

Ban TikTok, and bring back tick-tock! (Mechanical timepieces joke).

[baptist]

Tik Tok is just s4c anyway.

Never seen an "influencer" on the telly box who I either recognise or would be remotely influenced by.

[Captain Z]

Ke$ha angrily changes name to K£sha

[Urinal Cake]

Start of the new Cold War

[Noodle Lizard]

It's clearly fueled at least partially by xenophobia (which I suppose is sort of understandable where the Chinese government might be involved) and old bastards not liking what their granddaughters are up to. Leaves them open to a honking hypocrisy accusation, though, since all our homegrown red-white-and-blue social media apps are just as pernicious when it comes to data harvesting, abuse and user manipulation.

Bin the lot and we'd be over it within a month.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Start of the new Cold War

Reporting like this would indicate that's what the [our western] powers that be are certainly angling for.

China's military capability set to grow faster than its defence budget


The official defence budget will increase by 7.2 per cent this year. Experts believe, however, that the figure masks a much bigger boost for military capabilities as leader Xi Jinping seeks to transform the PLA into a more potent force while lowering the cost of weapons acquisition as China's economic slowdown bites.



International analysts of the Chinese military agree that Beijing's total military expenditure far outstrips its official defence budget, which does not include military research and development, some procurement, paramilitary forces and the coastguard. "Our estimates suggest that total military spending is about 30-35 per cent higher than the official budget," said Nan Tian, a researcher who tracks Chinese military spending at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.



According to Chinese and international military experts, that transformation is now in full swing and has been accelerated by what Beijing has observed during the war in Ukraine, in which Russia has run through huge supplies of materiel. "That military operation is dragging on a lot longer than expected and has created the need . . . for much larger quantities of munitions and other gear than expected," said a Chinese military expert who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to foreign media. "This is an experience we must draw lessons from." The PLA is telling suppliers to increase production to make up for the erosion of profits caused by lower prices, the expert added.

https://on.ft.com/49PVQ5C

[Funcrusher]

Neo-McCarthyism continues apace. Scary times.

[Urinal Cake]

Once the US bans it, western  and ME allies will follow or at least impose restrictions. I already saw an article saying that Chinese EVs are going to be used to spy on people so they're or at least their in-house software is probably going to be banned next.

[beanheadmcginty]

What about Jack Pumpkinhead? Is he still allowed over there?

[Funcrusher]

This nonsense just looks like it's building the case for World War 3. The average person in the US or the UK is likely to think, without this stuff, that China doesn't really pose much of a threat to them. Is China likely to invade the US? Not really. So a bunch of reds under the bed stories about how China is spying on you via TikTok or Huawei phones or electric cars or 'Chinese police stations'. Or the 'spy balloon', evidence of its truck sized payload of spying devices somehow never materialised. What would China get out of spying on the average TikTok user in the West anyway? Shouldn't we be more worried about our own governments spying on us using the vast array of means they have, as revealed by Snowden and Wikileaks?

[Barry Admin]

I haven't been on in a while, I need to get on and catch up with "Britney Spears" and her knee claps.  Ohhhhhyeaaaahh.  https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleybluedefxo/video/7343716720604941611

[Sebastian Cobb]

Shouldn't we be more worried about our own governments spying on us using the vast array of means they have, as revealed by Snowden and Wikileaks?

Yes.

[Shaxberd]

What would China get out of spying on the average TikTok user in the West anyway?

Love the thought of Chinese intelligence having massive dossiers that attempt to explain the significance of videos of attractive women making inedible food, or clips from Family Guy/Street Surfers/people cutting kinetic sand all played simultaneously. Secret bunkers of guys working out what incoherent garbage they can push into the algorithm to control the West and deciding it's Furby memes.

[Butchers Blind]

I like the guy who chops wood with an axe.

[Sebastian Cobb]

From what I understand TikTok does collect a lot of telemetry, more so than some other social apps, but it's also on a par with Youtube.

I imagine the US is mostly shitting bricks because it's in a foreign silo it can't peer into easily and just generally a non-American firm dominating something. It's worth remembering that Europe is CRAP at this and the only European social network that is really making a dent internationally at this point is Onlyfans.

[Blumf]

He's an officious arsehole, but he means well, so I think the US is overreacting frankly.

[Theoretical Dentist]

Once the US bans it, western and ME allies will follow or at least impose restrictions

If the US law goes through (and survives the inevitable legal chellenges, like the recent successful challenge to a state law in Montana), probably a more likely outcome is that ByteDance would be forced to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners, in which case the ban wouldn't apply. ByteDance could presumably hold on to Douyin, the original version of TikTok which is only available in China.

If it ends up being US-owned, US allies presumably wouldn't ban it because they've already allowed US-owned services to harvest their citizens' personal information, subject to similar legal requirements to Chinese companies, just requiring collaboration with US rather than Chinese authorities.

[Theoretical Dentist]

I imagine the US is mostly shitting bricks because it's in a foreign silo it can't peer into easily and just generally a non-American firm dominating something. It's worth remembering that Europe is CRAP at this and the only European social network that is really making a dent internationally at this point is Onlyfans.

Yes, absolutely this. Just a point on European services, the other big European internet service is Spotify, based in Sweden. It's not a social network but OnlyFans isn't really either. Spotify isn't profitable but neither are a lot of the US-based services, and it does have a lot of users worldwide and leads its market segment.

OnlyFans is very profitable despite having fewer users, because it's essentially a payment intermediary, but has less personal information (or at least personal information about fewer people) and is probably a less attractive target for control by states looking to strengthen their soft power.

[touchingcloth]

I saw an article about "book tokers" a while back and thought it was going to be like people desperately rolling up hardbacks as if they were banana skins, but it was just about how the kids these days lip sync to Don Quixote or whatever.

[shoulders]

With the tikin and the tokin and the bippin and the boppin

[touchingcloth]

With the tikin and the tokin and the bippin and the boppin

To the tik tik tokie say up jump the tokie to the tikie of the tokie the tik
Well I am China's Byte Dance I'd like to say L-O
L to the Trump, to the Biden all those ludicrous fellows