Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
The platform isn’t a national security threat, but a challenge to Silicon Valley’s dominance
Yes, and?
Does anyone think that China is just full of the warm fuzzies and wants us all to hold hands, make smores and sing kumbaya? They are every bit after power as the US is to hold onto it.
Not all states are equivalent.
The US is the hegemonic imperial core country (like the UK before it) and has been since the end of WWII, and even moreso since the end of Cold War I. The imperial core’s imperialism is driven by the monopoly stage of capitalism. The imperial core has been pillaging the Global South for the last 200+ years, including putting China through a century of humiliation. It caused WWI & WWII & Cold War I, and has now started Cold War II.
The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
The US has over 750 overseas military bases around the world, and is building more to further encircle China. It constantly has multiple regime change operations in play around the world.
But China is not a capitalist state and is not driven by the forces of monopoly capitalism. I think it has one anti-piracy base in Djibouti.
Yeah it's sort of like accusing a presidential campaign of being "all about gaining political power". Of course that's the goal. That's not the metric by which you should judge its actions.
Large centralised social media platform should all be banned. I miss the times when all you had was forums hosted in someone's basement, the Internet was a better place. Short form video content is the worst of the bunch though.
Democrats have convinced themselves taking over TikTok is the solution to their problems, but the reality is that if Joe Biden signs this bill into law when he is already tanking in the polls, particularly with young voters, he will hand the election to Trump. The youth will not forgive a party that was so extreme it banned or hijacked their favourite platform to censor them in order to keep a genocide going.
Best line is at the end
Yikes, what a flawed set of premises.
" What if Canada did the same thing to the US? They did!"
No, they didn't. Canada tried to boost Canadian media presence on American streaming platforms.
Making sure gooby gets an international viewing is very different from transmitting information to an overtly hostile government known for cyber attacks on its international peers.
"The platform isn't a national security threat".
It's a fact that the app TikTok is based off of, Douyin, sends the private data of every user straight to bytedance, owned in powerful minority stake by the Chinese government and that tiktok did the same thing with US user data until they promised they stopped a couple years ago.
As of January 2024 however, whoops, US citizen data(names, birthdates, location) is still being sent back to bytedance: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203?mod=followamazon
It's not some baseless concern, it's a national security consequence against data disclosures that were already carried out and have continued to this year despite assurances 2 years ago that data leaks to bytedance are not happening.
"Instrument of soft power"
Marvel movies becoming super popular internationally is an example of soft power. Gathering the personal information of users with a continuing precedent attacking US digital infrastructures and democratic institutions is not soft power, it is hostile statecraft.
I am not a proponent of monolithic tech companies nor am I particularly aligned against international competition in tech supremacy, but this ban isn't about theoretical cultural competition.
This tiktok ban is about the recent gathering of personal information that can be used to assess and attack digital infrastructures and electoral behaviors by entities that are continually attacking digital infrastructures and electoral processes, entities focused on consolidating power not within some international free market of soft cultural influence but by gathering and consolidating power and using that power to forward state ambitions.
@Varyk@sh.itjust.works @davel@lemmy.ml
If we wanted national data and communication security we would shut off the transatlantic cables and physically separate the U.S. Internet from the rest of the world. All matters of diplomacy could be conducted in public courts at the coastlines instead of over telephone wires and emails. Problem solved. We could set up a nice star-spangled curtain and let all the globalists rot from the fallout.
"Afraid of your neighbor's dog? Never leave your room, add a harness to your bed and strap in, wear plate armor at all times".
Not exactly practical.
There are ways to improve security without immobilizing yourself.
Blocking the widespread distribution and use of an app that sends personal and national data to a hostile government actively collecting and using that data to conduct digital and electoral attacks is not immobilizing, it's a simple step with zero downside that safeguards hundreds of millions of people.
Yes, I too would love the US president to decide which social media platforms I am allowed to legally use and who I can legally communicate with. I'm so scared China is going to, checks notes, influence my opinion that I'm willing to sacrifice my free speech rights in the process. Regulate me harder, daddy! 😍
It's actually Congress
I would find this all extremely concerning if China didn't regulate US platforms so heavily. For example, Tiktok has safety limitations for children in China while they have nothing at all for children in the US. It's being used as a social/mental health weapon.
Just remember that daddy allows you access to the propaganda that encourages defending Tiktok.
Finally, your speech has not been limited. You can take it to any of the competitors. There would be free speech concerns for Tiktok, but it's a Chinese company, not protected by the US constitution, and checks notes China proactively limits speech.
I would find this all extremely concerning if China didn’t regulate US platforms so heavily. For example, Tiktok has safety limitations for children in China while they have nothing at all for children in the US. It’s being used as a social/mental health weapon.
So you're saying China is better than the US because it regulates social media while the US does literally nothing for its own children.
I agree.
So! Instead of political banditry and forcing TikTok to sell to a US company we should regulate our social media companies too just like China does! Or do you really think TikTok will collect less data or exploit children less when it is owned by a US company? 😂
Your defense is "some other dictatorship does it, so that doesn't concern me?". Saying things are OK because the CCP or Putin does them is a very slippery slope.
They didn't care about it being China owned
They didn't care about data sharing
Share info on the platform the US can't censor though and then it's ban time 😂
Has anybody actually read the bill?
The whole bill is about giving the government power to ban "foreign adversary controlled applications" and there's nothing about the president being able to ban whatever app they want.
The bill defines a foreign adversary as: "a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code":
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The People's Republic of China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China);
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Republic of Cuba (Cuba);
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Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran);
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Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea);
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Russian Federation (Russia); and
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Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro (Maduro Regime).
So unless you are on the side of the enemies of the US and want social media apps controlled by them, I don't know why you wouldn't support this bill.
Edit: I think the misunderstanding/misinformation comes from a few places, but ultimately I think it boils down to the fact the bill requires the app/platform to be a foreign adversary AND it requires a presidential executive order before the app will be banned.
Those are not my adversaries, they’re the adversaries of US military industrial-complex and the imperial core capitalists in general. One reason they’re a thorn in the capitalists’ side is that they’re unable to exploit them through neocolonialism.
What has Cuba done to me? The reason Cuba has been under an illegal, grinding embargo for sixty years is that they pose the threat of a good example to the capitalist class: Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans
unless you are on the side of the enemies of the US
You mean enemies of the US's ruling class of capitalists, who are the working class's allies.
"Your enemies are not our enemies." - Nelson Mandela (who, btw, was on the US terrorist list until 2013 and is/was an enemy of the US. Was Nelson Mandela your enemy?)
I will never really understand why china's on these lists. I know it's because theyre communist and commies = bad, but every other country on their has literally vowed to kill Americans, while china's biggest crime is making close to as much money as we do.
china's biggest crime is making close to as much money as we do.
Nah man, I'm pretty sure the Tiananmen square massacre was a bigger crime. Not to mention their genocide of the Uighur people, their oppression of Hong Kong, their attempts to steal Taiwan's sovereignty.
ETA: big thanks to OP for so clearly and concisely showing they're a tankie.
I thought communism was bad because they want to censor our freedoms. So why is the freedoms censoring the comminsists?
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The probability of a war between the US and China is very high as judged by the US military. Prominently over the Taiwan situation. Having service members with tiktok on their devices would be terrible for opsec. To me this confirms that we are continuing to track on that train of thought. With that line of thinking this seems to an increased likelihood. Be careful out there folks.
Just my thoughts...
I thought government employees were already banned from having TikTok on their devices. Does that not also apply to military personnel?
Bans can be bypassed, but my concern is if the new law makes it criminal to use tiktok. If so, the media should stop saying "tiktok ban" and instead say "new law makes it a crime to use tiktok"
The platform isn't a national security threat, but a challenge to silicon valley's dominance
No, I'm pretty sure it's just both
Seeing as how Mussolini has a daughter who is alive today and just as fascist as their father, is this person Marx' descendant?
The main point is that tiktok can persuade people politically and cannot be sued by the US government. So it must be owned by a US entity so it plays by our rules... keep the same asshole politicians in power. You want bridges and got no rivers? A Republican or Democrat can deliver! And ofcourse all the partisan stuff like religion in school, freedom for everyone etc.