American politics, in a nutshell

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superrific

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A thread for talking about politics more generally than the day to day stuff. BTW I'm trying to add content, which will hopefully reduce trolling. Trolling takes center stage when there is little else to talk about. Anyway:

So Congress got together last year and, in probably the only issue on which they could find bipartisan agreement, banned tiktok. The vote wasn't close. It sailed through. It was the only instance in recent years in which good legislation implementing a forward-thinking policy was passed on a bipartisan basis -- at least the only one I can remember. And Congress knew that there was a big risk of tiktok going dark. The sale of the platform looked unlikely then, and it looks unlikely now. In fact, they changed the legislation to push back the effective date from November to January, specifically for that reason.

And now that the time has come . . . everyone wants a do-over. Trump wants to not enforce the law (which he can't, not really). Republicans want to repeal the legislation and . . . Democrats are also running away from it. Chuck Schumer is like, "hey Mr. President, maybe we can extend the deadline for a while?"

To me, this seems like such a telling snapshot of our politics. Our elected legislators literally have no ability to think ahead. I thought that the tiktok bill was a rare example of thinking ahead, of protecting against a future hypothetical threat, but actually it was the opposite: it was a bunch of lawmakers who literally couldn't think ahead 90 days. A bunch of lawmakers who, having voted to ban it, appeared to be unprepared for the ban to take effect. Sigh.

This is, of course, not a "both sides are equally bad" situation: the Republican opposition is more vehement because Trump likes tiktok now and they just fall in line. But Dems are not blameless here. It's just as embarrassing to see Schumer backtracking. It passed the Senate 79-18. I'm not easily finding the roll call vote, but I can't imagine Schumer voted against it.
 
It is a mess
Now personally this is a subject that I feel very ignorant about. As in- Is this a national security threat?
 
Get ready for the "free speech infringement" brigade, despite that fact that there are multiple platforms that TikTok users can migrate to.

There was an article in GQ about this last week, and it explains how TikTokers were freaking out when Trump first proposed this ban in 2020, but in the intervening years, they have spread their content across multiple platforms like Instagram, Reels, and so on. They are far less concerned about losing TikTok.

I realize the politicians hear numbers like 170 million Americans use TikTok and they will be pissed and vote out those who supported the ban. Among those 170 million are. bunch of people like me who almost never use the app but someone will occasionally send me a link and then I will fall into the TikTok hole for half an hour.

I have no real clue about the national security threat, but if people who know a lot more about such things than I do believe it is a problem, I will listen to them. I just don't think it is a big deal and people who use TikTok have plenty of options to post their cat videos.

I agree with super that this is a demonstration of political cowardice by Trump and Congress. This was Trump's idea in the first place. I suspect that the goal of Trumpworld is to find one of their billionaire buddies to buy the US version of TikTok and turn it into another firehose of disinformation (beyond what it already spews.)
 
Paine said:
I think it’s more about Meta and Google wanting to protect their social media market share from foreign competition. I have no more or less concern giving my data to the scary Chinese communists than I do giving to Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg et al.

Gen Z is fleeing to another Chinese social media app called RedNote.
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Well, Musk for sure.

I used to think as you did. Then I read a couple of articles on the subject and I found them convincing -- they laid out the national security consequences. And as you know, I'm no credulous fool, especially about national security measure (which are often exaggerated for effect, see e.g. Iraq War).

Unfortunately, because I wasn't that interested and I had other things going on, I can't remember the specifics nor exactly where I read the articles, but they weren't hard for me to find so you surely can find them or similar articles.

I would say that my position now is: "I can see both sides to the argument, and I can't really evaluate them because I don't know enough." FWIW. I know this isn't all that helpful, but at least one takeaway could be "a smart, skeptical liberal thinks it could very well be justified" and however much mileage you want to take from that is up to you.
 
Paine said:
I think it’s more about Meta and Google wanting to protect their social media market share from foreign competition. I have no more or less concern giving my data to the scary Chinese communists than I do giving to Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg et al.

Gen Z is fleeing to another Chinese social media app called RedNote.
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I don't think tiktok is a personal threat to me any more than musk, zuck, and bozos, but national security threat, yeah.
 
TikTok Inc.’s ultimate parent company is ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company that has operations in China. ByteDance Ltd. owns TikTok’s proprietary algorithm, which is developed and maintained in China. The company is also responsible for developing portions of the source code that runs the TikTok platform. ByteDance Ltd. is subject to Chinese laws that require it to “assist or cooperate” with the Chinese Government’s “intelligence work” and to ensure that the Chinese Government has “the power to access and control private data” the company holds. H. R. Rep. No. 118–417, p. 4 (2024) (H. R. Rep.); see 2 App. 673–676.

It is most definitely a National Security threat. All the PRC has to do is order ByteDance to send all of it's data to the mainland and they are bound by law to do so. I deleted my TikTok account years ago.
 
Paine said:
I’ve read articles about nat sec concerns re: using TikTok on government devices. Makes sense to me that none of these government devices should have any social media use on them at all, Chinese or otherwise.

I don’t use TikTok anyways and never have, so I’m pretty ambivalent about not having access to it. Just seems a bit silly to focus on TikTok when American companies steal data from Americans all the time (and routinely lose this data to hackers).
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The difference is direct control by the CCP, which Bytedance is subject to.
 
Paine said:
I think it’s more about Meta and Google wanting to protect their social media market share from foreign competition. I have no more or less concern giving my data to the scary Chinese communists than I do giving to Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg et al.

Gen Z is fleeing to another Chinese social media app called RedNote.
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all of this.
 
One of my huge issues, given what I've learned about individual tiktok content creators, is that there are a multitude of ppl apathetic to communication and art being silenced.

I'd say it's terrifying, but the old ppl are out of touch, middle ppl are merely trying to survive, and younger ppl have been dumbed down to a sickening level.
 
Can someone post an article or two that they think provides a good summary of the national security risks posed by TikTok? Because I've done a basic Google search and read the articles provided and I don't see the national security risk posed by TikTok alone (and instead see TikTok as merely one part of a larger security risk posed by modern technology and its place in our daily lives).

I don't view the situation as one where Congress got together and passed good legislation in bipartisan agreement that they now want to run from, I see it as one where both parties fell victim to "demonize our supposed enemy" and found bipartisan agreement in taking a largely PR vote that they now regret due to the check coming due for a bad decision made largely based on short-term PR optics.

I think there are a lot of national security risks that come from our phones (and other computers) plus how technology dependent we are in nearly every aspect of our daily lives, but it strikes me that focusing on TikTok is merely a scapegoating mission that doesn't do a lot to actual solve real problems and instead provides the appearance of taking action while also demonizing a "suspicious" out-group.
 
Paine said:

This piece from the Rand Corporation has been the best explanation of the “national security” risk that I’ve seen so far.

Seems like there is concern about the massive amounts of audio visual data being fed to create AI models in China. That seems to be the real fear from the blob: that Chinese AI will outpace American AI, thus undermining American hegemony.
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"The blob"? Sigh. This isn't quite as ludicrous as Marc Andreesen claiming (as he did today in the Times) that his portfolio companies were being forced to hire Marxists, but it's an unhelpful phrase that seems to be "neoliberal" metastasized. Using the phrase uncritically like this will cause you to lose credibility, not just with me but with others here I think.

But anyway, back to the subject at hand: that is not actually the main concern. TikTok's data collection creates opportunity for blackmail. Someone uses the app for a while, and then they get nominated for a government position with a top secret clearance, and the background check doesn't reveal that the person, as a 22 year old, was briefly into squish porn. But China would know, and they could use the threat of revealing that to control the government employee. That's bad. In theory, an American company could do the same, but it's not remotely the same danger.

Moreover, they can even go after people who don't use tiktok. It can swipe contact information. So someone exchanges numbers with Jeffrey Epstein, and China knows. You can blackmail them with that information.

Same with extramarital affairs. Guy has a phone and uses it to communicate with his secret lover. Well, now China knows that's happening. Hmm. Blackmail could easily follow.

There's a lot of mischief that it can do, and I'm confident I'm just scratching the surface.
 
SnoopRob said:
Can someone post an article or two that they think provides a good summary of the national security risks posed by TikTok? Because I've done a basic Google search and read the articles provided and I don't see the national security risk posed by TikTok alone (and instead see TikTok as merely one part of a larger security risk posed by modern technology and its place in our daily lives).

I don't view the situation as one where Congress got together and passed good legislation in bipartisan agreement that they now want to run from, I see it as one where both parties fell victim to "demonize our supposed enemy" and found bipartisan agreement in taking a largely PR vote that they now regret due to the check coming due for a bad decision made largely based on short-term PR optics.

I think there are a lot of national security risks that come from our phones (and other computers) plus how technology dependent we are in nearly every aspect of our daily lives, but it strikes me that focusing on TikTok is merely a scapegoating mission that doesn't do a lot to actual solve real problems and instead provides the appearance of taking action while also demonizing a "suspicious" out-group.
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I didn't post an article, but I summarized at least one set of concerns. A foreign adversary who has all sorts of juicy private information on US government employees -- e.g. military personnel, intelligence agencies, etc. -- is dangerous. ByteDance can obtain a lot of compromising information from or about both willing users and non-users.
 
I thought TikTok was used just to show little movies of dogs or girls in bikinis
 
Paine said:
This nat sec mindset has found bedfellows in general right-wing China fear mongering, red-baiting, and orientalism. It doesn’t hurt that the financial incentive lines up for American social media companies to want TikTok out as well.
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If you rely on someone saying, "this is **a** justification for the law," and then you debunk the justification, then that's all you have done: debunk a justification. You haven't debunked the whole argument or demonstrated anything about the law.
 
superrific said:
I didn't post an article, but I summarized at least one set of concerns. A foreign adversary who has all sorts of juicy private information on US government employees -- e.g. military personnel, intelligence agencies, etc. -- is dangerous. ByteDance can obtain a lot of compromising information from or about both willing users and non-users.
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Sure, that's an issue. But I would imagine that China would have a lot of other ways to learn that same information. And there are a lot of other companies - American and international - who would have the ability to discern that same information.

Nothing in your summary makes me think that is anything more than scapegoating TikTok by Boomer politicians against a Chinese company that primarily appeals to Gen Z and Alpha. If the US government were really concerned about data privacy and security, it would have to take on an almost unfathomable revision of laws that would affect nearly every piece of IT hardware and software that we use in our daily lives today.
 
Paine said:
I think it’s more about Meta and Google wanting to protect their social media market share from foreign competition. I have no more or less concern giving my data to the scary Chinese communists than I do giving to Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg et al.

Gen Z is fleeing to another Chinese social media app called RedNote.
Click to expand...
I mean, I agree with you on the first part, but just because one or two bad actors already have access to our data doesn't mean it doesn't matter if other bad actors get it too. In that sense it's obviously still bad for Musk and Zuck to have our data, but it would be worse if Musk and Zuck AND the Chinese government had our data.
 
SnoopRob said:
Sure, that's an issue. But I would imagine that China would have a lot of other ways to learn that same information. And there are a lot of other companies - American and international - who would have the ability to discern that same information.

Nothing in your summary makes me think that is anything more than scapegoating TikTok by Boomer politicians against a Chinese company that primarily appeals to Gen Z and Alpha. If the US government were really concerned about data privacy and security, it would have to take on an almost unfathomable revision of laws that would affect nearly every piece of IT hardware and software that we use in our daily lives today.
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1. None of those other countries have a legal obligation to a foreign adversary to share sensitive data.

2. That last sentence quoted above is categorically false. It's like saying, "if the US government was really concerned about smog, it would ban all automobiles." That's obviously wrong because of cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, your last clause undermines the whole claim. That the alternative would be an "unfathomable revision of laws," is a good reason to take a lesser measure. The failure to be perfect does not imply the failure to be good.

3. I think you're arguing like a MAGA. "I would imagine" is an extremely weak basis for an argument. The national security community has been worried about tiktok for almost a decade. It is implausible to think that they would focus on that danger if it in fact were true that China could easily get the information in another fashion.

In general, the question you should ask yourself is, "wtf do I know about this?" And when the answer is "basically nothing," you should be reluctant to dismiss the views of experts as little more than sour grapes or scapegoating. You've admitted that there are in fact national security concerns, and you dismissed them with a waive of your hand -- with essentially no basis. It is just mind-boggling to me that you would basically write off the opinions of the national security community, President Biden, leaders from both parties in Congress, based on what you would imagine.

And for the record, I often ask myself, "wtf do I know about this?" And when the answer is "basically nothing" -- as it is on this issue! -- my inclination is to avoid forming a strong opinion. Why would you? Isn't this part of the problem in politics, that people form strong opinions based on essentially nothing?
 
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