American politics really is one of the dumbest, most corrupt things out there. Good god.
This feels like trying to trick your dog into taking his medicine, by hiding it in its food. So apparently your average US Senator is as dumb as a Golden Retriever if they need this tactic to actually get shit done.
It’s insane that Americans still tolerate this. Clearly they don’t have your best interests as their main focus.
A consistent viewpoint I see on America, is the assumption that if we don't like a politician we can simply say so and they're out of office. One of the biggest problems here is actually that most people feel lacking in their personal control on the government, even local. Everything is such a large scale, that 'speaking up' not only feels like it does nothing—it really does nothing, unless you're famous or something. No one here is happy about how our government works, we just don't have control over it. It's an illusion of control, while the people at the top make the actual choices.
Also as much as I hate TikTok, and the amount of time people spend on it, I think the government starting to censor what applications we can and can’t use is a scary thing. Congressmen have already stated “As soon as the TikTok legislation takes effect, we are going after Facebook and the others”
Can’t remember which one said it but it was an interview on NPR with a congressman.
I say this all the time, and people say: "impossible, news outlets need revenue". To which I will say that is entirely bullshit. We could easily afford grants for news, and provide continuing grants to news sources that rank the highest in 3rd party consumer evaluations.
Look into noscript (Firefox extension), seems to work well for my local papers website (they use some js to hide the page after it loads, noscript blocks scripts from running).
I say this on Lemmy a lot and welcome the down votes. Although it seems more and more tame lately. I really think people are understanding the value of tiktok. I find out news on tiktok quicker than anywhere else, I don't ever trust the details, but the events are always actually happening and usually they even have a relatively factual take on it.
Also, if anyone hasn't tried out Donghua Jinlong food grade glycine, they really must.
Fun fact: these days, Tiktok is the main social media outlet for uncensored pro-Palestine activism, owing to the fact that Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube tend to censor most criticism of the Israeli apartheid government.
THAT'S why they're suddenly pretending that its spying on users is any worse than that of the others (it's not) now of all times: AIPAC and other major donors are feeling the heat and want to shut people up.
That and because it's an election year and the combination of xenophobia and pretending to care about online privacy appeals to a wide selection of gullible prospective voters.
It's not for "uncensored pro-Palestine activism", it's a primary vector for distributing blatant propaganda and misinformation. China is one of the big three who are aggressively pushing a pro-Hamas narrative on social media:
Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that he intends to package the measure, a modified version of a stand-alone bill that the House passed last month, with foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The move “to package TikTok is definitely unusual, but it could succeed,” said Paul Gallant, a policy analyst for the financial services firm TD Cowen.
TikTok has said that the national security concerns are unfair and that it has spent more than $1 billion on a detailed plan for its U.S. operations that would wall off user data and offer third-party oversight of its content recommendations.
“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill,” Alex Haurek, a spokesman for the company, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Last year, a federal judge temporarily blocked a statewide ban of TikTok from taking effect in Montana, preventing the nation’s first such prohibition.
Officials from the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed lawmakers in the House and Senate about their concerns, adding fuel to the effort to pass the bill.
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