I heard inside info from the hill. Apparently a few weeks ago when TikTok got thousands of kids to call their congresspeople, it tipped a ton of the people on the fence to the “hell yes” category. Many offices got more calls than they do in a month that one day. TikTok showed how powerful it is, right there, right then.
If China / TikTok hadn’t overplayed the hand, they wouldn’t lose this weapon. Now they likely will (good thing)
I worked in a Hill office and heard most of the votes were decided long ago. Meta did a full court press, deeply entwined with the government, to push TikTok out. Expect Meta to make a play for TikTok.
> "Most of these push notifications went to minor children, and these minor children were flooding our offices with phone calls," Krishnamoorthi told CBS News. "Basically they pick up the phone, call the office and say, 'What is a congressman? What is Congress?' They had no idea what was going on."
> The congressman said these concerns and the app's access to young children's data are driving factors creating the bipartisan support of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," a bill he co-sponsored. The bill calls for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or the app will face restrictions.
> "This is exactly the reason why so many of our colleagues voted for the bill. They don't want a foreign adversary controlling social media apps using geolocation to target minor children to call members of Congress or interfere in our elections. This is exactly the reason why this particular legislation is necessary now," Krishnamoorthi said.
If those voters put their money where their mouth is, and vote out the incubates, who went against their wishes, then the next congress will be full of new people.
The depressing part is that U.S. government structure and the 3 branches of government are part of the 4th/5th grade curriculum. This implies that the (presumably pre-teen/teenaged) kids who called Congress had already passed that part of their schooling, and so they're going to grow up into age 18+ voters that still don't know what Congress is.
I recently had a conversation with a 33 year old who I would consider both intelligent and well-educated, including some college. His uncle is a lawyer (I met him at some family+friends party or another) who he spent a lo of time around.
I mentioned something about a SCOTUS opinion and he was very surprised that the court published its opinions. We delved a bit further and he also didn't realize that you could read bills or laws or executive orders.
I have never been more alarmed or scared about the future of our democracy.
Yes, I have similar experiences with people in the same age bracket. I'm not sure what the root problem is, I'm sure it's myriad in its origins, but there's some combination of individuals being fully checked-out of the democratic process taking the structure for granted and letting it kind of wash over them, and also a systematic failure of education which has completely failed to impart certain vital aspects of knowledge.
Like you I would classify most of these people as intelligent, and although literally qualified, (possession of university degrees at various levels), they are actually completely uneducated.
As a counterpoint, I know a lot of people from that age group who do know a lot about government and have intelligent conversations about it. Similar as your situation, I mostly hang out with either musicians or engineers or both as that includes my major hobbies and work crew.
Well, before everything went on the internet it was much harder to find published opinions and laws as they happened. In the 90s when the guy was a child he probably only had exposure to historical documents, not current ones. I actually don’t know where you would have found the full text of those pre internet. The public library? I also found it kind of novel to read current court opinions not too long ago. Government function stuff seems like the kind of thing you learn about as a kid and don’t really update actively.
Nah, I grew up in the 80s and 90s and you could learn a lot from newspapers, magazines, television, or a trip to the library where you could get plenty more. There's no excuse for believing the stuff was secret. Not easy to get, sure, a trip downtown, maybe, but "secret from the press" for example, that's ridiculous for anyone that's ever turned on the nightly news channel in the 70s, 80s, or 90s where I have actual pre-internet experience. Also, by the early 90s you could get it all on the actual internet, pre-web, by going to a library with an internet connection and gopher. Bills, rulings, regulations, and other government publications could be found and accessed through Gopher directories maintained by government agencies, legislative bodies, and other organizations. Being away from all of this is OK if you at least know that it does in fact exist and other people use it. But believing that it doesn't exist, that government works in secret, that's just a busted education right there.
Government isn't something that people deal with in their daily lives outside of their municipal government offices, like the DMV.
Between that and daily life being a grind for most people, it is very understandable for someone to not know that the SCOTUS does these things.
Honestly, while everyone (myself included) should be more aware and involved in government, this blissful ignorance is a testament to the stability and freedoms offered by our government.
Not knowing they're public and published is alarming. I was reading this stuff on Gopher servers 35 years ago at the library. That was pre-web internet and it was plenty good for government documents.
All this situation reads to me is “US corps can’t compete, China ‘won’ that fight so now US corps have to pretend it’s a security risk and get it banned.”
There are other chinese apps. This doesn’t ban them.
It’s also snuck into an aid bill. A completely reprehensible act if ever there was one.
Social media platforms don't "win" on their own merits. They win due to chance network effects. TikTok isn't special, and it would likely cycle out of the public consciousness along with a new generation that picks the next hit network, like Facebook and Instagram.
I recently learned from a The Verge podcast that the U.S. has law in place to limit how many shares can be owned by a foreign shareholders if the company is a news/media company (??? Alert: I'm not so sure about the detail). Which is in fact a fairly common idea among the nations:
> U.K. Moves to Bar Foreign State Ownership of Newspapers, a Blow to Telegraph Bid
> https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/business/media/jeff-zucker-telegraph-delay.html
as well as:
> https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/68072
I guess it's too bad that the industry are calling this kind of service "Social Media".
(Of course, you might be thinking "Oh, social media is not newspaper or broadcast station"... well, the interpretation of law can be a spectrum sometimes. Also, now days people are reading (algorithmically recommended) news on those platforms instead of buying newspaper/radio)
It's quite funny. As a Chinese myself, I'm actually a little sympathetic towards TikTok in that IF they can survive outside the Communist Party umbrella, it will show the rest of Chinese entrepreneurs that pledging to the party is not essential. But, I guess apparently these entrepreneur needs to pick the right industry first.
This is what I have never understood about calling congress people. Why would they listen to a random person? If you have some clout or are an expert on a niche issue sure. But I just feel like if you’re a nobody why would they trust you.
They aggregate the responses and tally them up statistically. The assumption is that for every person who bothers to call in, 10+ people, perhaps even hundreds, feel the same way. (I assume they'd model based on the relative number of total calls across all issues vs. voters in the district). Then this becomes data for the representative to know how their constituents feel about the issue.
The rep isn't going to listen to you specifically - you get a form letter back (sometimes years later), and the only thing that matters is the issue and whether you're yay or nay. But because so few people call in, it makes your opinion (on that issue, at least) weight much more highly than the average voter.
Well because those constituents vote for them and they have to win elections. If they don't listen, they will literally be voted out by those same people (assuming there is significant volume)
I believe you're mistaken in thinking that calling your rep doesn't matter. They keep track of what their constituents call them about, totaling it up at the end of the week or month.
It's one of the ways they keep track of what their voters care about.
This was from a friend who interned there 20 years ago, things may have changed.
I assume it's simply a matter of caring about voter opinions. The one that bothered to complain is presumed to represent the 1000s who care about the issue but not enough to call.
Early in my career, I interned for a member of Congress. Calling your member of Congress does absolutely nothing. An intern, or a staff assistant, takes down your information and someone called a legislative correspondent responds to you, but signs the members name to the bottom of it.
I guess it's a feature of single-representative districts. Loud voices at the margins can matter, if losing a small number of votes may lose you the election.
The dynamics are different with proportional representation. You care more about keeping your core supporters happy, because the random people opposing something loudly will probably vote someone else anyway.
It's so fucking awesome how when people actually reach out to Congress, asking them to not do something, Congress responds with "How dare you tell me how to do my job!", and does the opposite of what was requested. You can really feel the democracy at work.
I'm sure they were real annoyed receiving phone calls from normal people instead of just businesses trying to set up meetings for ~~bribes~~ campaign donations.
It's interesting that this analysis implies intentionality on behalf of TikTok, and does not allow for the case that its users genuinely enjoy the service and therefore do not want to see it banned.
I don't think TikTok is itself any worse than our own domestic brain liquefying apps like Twitter, and thus the ban's surface reasoning is specious at best, but I'm fully onboard with reciprocity. If China won't let US companies operate in China, the US shouldn't let Chinese companies operate in the US.
It is interesting how this creates a market for an overarching market-state whose sole function is to protect free trade that would otherwise be blocked by national-level government. Think of the Common Economic Protocol from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - or, for that matter, how modern states arose out of what were essentially protection rackets that would prevent bandits from interfering with free trade between villages.
Many empires were either founded or strongly assisted by unifying trade. It’s a straightforward way of capturing value accruing from comparative advantage.
I'd prefer if China would allow American social media to operate in China to subvert the CCP regime and eventually free China but if they're not going to then I agree that Chinese social media companies should be banned from the US.
There is nothing TikTok can do that any other app on Apple or google can do.
They could solve a lot of this in an instant; no one will propose limiting collection at the OS level.
The US is fine with SV domestic spying, and not OK with China collecting this amount of information and having a massive “suggestive” social media platform.
Sure, limit TikTok, whatever. I can see who really cares about what.
Collecting data isn’t so much the issue as having central control over the millions of information bubbles that people live in. Though that’s a power that Facebook, Xitter, and Instagram also have at their disposal
I think there is a lot more valuable data than just what you watch on social media platforms for different actors. If I am a burglar for instance, I want to collect what you post. Etc.
> I don't think TikTok is itself any worse than our own domestic brain liquefying apps like Twitter
Do you honestly believe that a disinformation source whose parent organization granted a board seat to a political apparatus that will jail you for holding up a blank sheet of paper during a protest is the same as Twitter?
Because I find that difficult to believe.
I suppose if Twitter integrated a serving senior White House official into whatever shit-sandwich is its current leadership structure, and it was the policy of the current administration to jail persons for holding up blank sheets of paper at a protest, I could understand.
People, and websites, are allowed to be terrible. You can't really stop that. Terrible people and websites under the control of despotic regimes that will jail you for holding up a blank sheet of paper during a protest are a different matter altogether.
Except that the US operations for TikTok USDS are under the control and review of both a separate business unit, incorporated and independently run in the US, -and- Oracle. Oracle is signing their name to the data protections and controls and code reviews - all spelled out in the project Texas and USDS docs.
I still pretty firmly believe this to be political theater, but it’s confusing given that it’s now alienating a large young but voter-age demographic and the thousands of small businesses that are built on TikTok. And it’s probably pissing off some 16 year olds too.
"If China won't let US companies operate in China, the US shouldn't let Chinese companies operate in the US." Sounds like some middle school arguments, not some serious thoughts
I get that China is dangerous and TikTok is terrible for society, but this sets a dangerous precedent that the government can just ban any social media site it considers a threat now.
The government has always held a high degree of power over international commerce, especially wrt adversarial nations. I get that this seems different because of the scale of tiktok but in principle it really seems to me to be extremely typical. There is no 'right' to participate in the international market.
We banned Huawei from communications infrastructure. Cuban and Iranian companies are basically not allowed to participate in the US economy, this is business as usual for any country.
In some ways I wish the EU would ban US tech companies, EU basically has no indigenous tech landscape compared to Russia and China who have suppressed US tech.
Do recall that the EU has imposed quite a bit of regulation on US tech companies, remember all the requirements that EU citizen data be located in the EU? An outright ban however is unlikely between allied democratic nations, but it is certainly within their right
There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. It’s not, if Meta, AWS, Google were banned in the EU perfectly functional European equivalents would pop up very rapidly similar to Russia and China.
> There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult.
I personally think it is difficult due to scale and economics.
That is not to say Europeans can't grow a competitor in cloud, search or social media -- of course they can. There's a deep talent pool in Europe. But there's a lot of friction to doing tech at scale in EU. Large amounts of capital is much harder to raise, and varied regulatory environments/languages add cost to scaling. Plus you have to treat the UK and non-EU European countries as a separate markets.
The difference between EU vs China (and to some extent Russia) is the latter have similar abilities to scale as the U.S.
Also competitive advantages can be difficult to beat. AWS had a 8 year lead over Azure and while Azure is a lot better these days, it's still not all the way there. GCP, even though it is backed by one of the greatest and most highly capitalized large-scale engineering orgs on the planet, struggles to get appreciable marketshare.
Which, I think, would be a good thing on mid and longer term. Because the vacuum would create positions to be filled. And Europe does have tech, and especially would have tech, if it were given some room.
They don't allow foreign companies to operate in China at all. You must form a 51% / 49% partnership where the 51% is a Chinese-owned company.
Worse, they do have different standards for domestic and foreign products. TikTok, for example, is banned in China. The approved social media app carries state crafted propaganda. A year or so ago you'd see employment information for women on WeChat. Now you see advice for staying home and raising children, because the state decided that's what women should do in China.
Chinese companies are Chinese government entities. The government there fully understands that tools like WeChat and TikTok can be used to move public opinion or distract, degrade, and erode and they use them to do exactly that.
They don't allow foreign companies to operate in China at all. You must form a 51% / 49% partnership where the 51% is a Chinese-owned company.
The 51% can be a Chinese individual, and IIRC that's the most common way that VIE arrangements are set up.
In practice, the foreign company still exerts control (via contract with the 51% owner) and keeps the profits (via contract with the JV entity).
Worse, they do have different standards for domestic and foreign products.
I'm curious to know what you mean by this. Do you mean:
A) Different standards based on the location of the provider?
B) Different standards based on the location of the consumer?
If you mean (A), then I'm not sure your example supports it, unless you consider Douyin to be a foreign supplier.
If you mean (B), then that's what I'm trying to say: China requires certain things of all companies (irrespective of the location of their controllers or beneficial owners).
Because FB is too dangerous. It allows access to sway opinions of the people. Zuckerberg may have been in it for the advertising money, but Xi looks at social media platforms as weapons first, and commercial exercises second.
You think the US lets foreign companies do whatever kind of business they want with US children and there should be no rules around that? That this is some kind of novel precedent? Seriously? That's gotta be a joke. Of course the US can ban any foreign business it wants and it has and it does, and it can ban any US company from doing business with any foreign country it wants and it has and it does and it will. That's the whole damn meaning of sovereignty. Are you not familiar with that concept?
What stops the group of investors that acquires TikTok from having ByteDance US (or ByteDance Beijing) operate the platform behind the scenes?
Why does some US entity that probably contributed nothing to TikTok's success get to financially benefit from acquiring TikTok by force?
What good will having someone else operate TikTok (who might not be technically adept enough to do this) do to curb the propaganda concerns the US Gov is alleging? If the operator isn't a tech company that is comfortable with webscale, wouldn't propaganda accelerate?
I really dislike TikTok's social influence (despite its engineering and AI contributions being technical marvels), but if the US Gov is really concerned about national security, they should just ban it; no sales.
This sets the precedent to do the exact same thing to domestic companies if the government feels that the public is being "manipulated," or data being used, in a way it doesn't like.
If the rationale was solely tit for tat, "China does this to our tech companies, so we're simply doing the same," that would actually be significantly more palatable.
No it doesn't. It says foreign adversarial companies cannot target US children without facing scrutiny. That you've got your panties in a twist over that suggests you don't know the first thing about how international trade with hostile nations works, has worked, and will continue to work. I've got a word you should look up. It will open your mind in new ways. It's called "sovereignty" and you would benefit from learning what it means.
It’s fascinating to me how if elites care about something, it happens immediately, whereas if regular people care about it, it is difficult if not impossible to get done.
McCarthyism wasn't about foreign companies targeting US children. Do you really think this is equivalent. Please consider before responding so as not to confirm our suspicions that you're just full of shit and don't know what McCarthyism actually was. I'll give you a clue, it was about AMERICANS, in government and other positions of authority. It wasn't about foreign companies that's for fucking sure.
A number of countries already ban specific social media sites, including US based social media sites. In many cases, the core issue is that the country wants foreign social media sites to obey local laws and instructions on what to ban. And if the social media site refuses, it is just wholesale banned.
Leaving aside whether this is good or bad, I do foresee a world in which there is diversity in the number of social media sites, and their usage divided along country lines.
I doubt it. In fact, I think Tik-Tok is of concern because young people are outraged at what's happening in Gaza and the current leadership is committed to defending the oppressors. Sorry to bring politics in, but it's a political topic and I think this is much more of a motivator than any "fake" content.
Yes, because when algos are manipulated to feature certain messages and influence certain topics, it's an adversarial country doing it. With US companies, that's not the case. You don't see that difference?
This mole is fine to whack even if the rest aren’t addressed today. America has so many problems, a win is a win, even if hypocritical and disproportionate. The means are like making sausage, but the desired outcome is legit. Addressing TikTok today doesn’t prevent addressing domestic Big Tech going forward.
Is it so much about accumulating whatever data they can grab from their app or is it really more about having an adversary control the recommendation algorithm?
I think the mass-calling campaign wasn't the best idea - it proved they could mobilize US citizens to a targeted cause, one directed at law makers at that. Get yourself banned speed run, any percent.
> we have just seen China take the predictable action of banning a bunch of applications, which will hurt American companies.
Considering the current geopolitical climate, the fact that these companies are contributing to the Chinese economy negatively impacts national security and is socially irresponsible
The sad thing is, this bill isn't limited to Tik-Tok. The language was deliberately made overly broad. I would not be surprised if this is eventually used to force American-owned, American-controlled founders to divest ownership of their own companies because of actions taken by other people.
There are two parties in this country, the stupid one and the evil one. Whenever they eagerly get together and push "bipartisan" legislation, that's when I worry the most about whatever stupid, evil thing they are up to these days.
You're lying. Read the bill. It clearly targets foreign companies and not domestic ones. That you either didn't read and are confused or did and are now intentionally spreading lies are both condemnations that should embarrass you.
>If the company cannot sell the app in that time, it will become illegal for app stores and web-hosting companies to offer TikTok, as long as it remains under the control of a "foreign adversary."
This is misinformation. The bill is about companies owned by a "foreign adversary" (literal wording of the bill, and enumerated examples in the bill itself).
So please explain how this can ever be used against American owned companies.
When "foreign adversary" gets construed to mean anyone platforming a foreign adversary, or perhaps even merely just platforming American citizens with the views of a foreign adversary.
(1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY.—
8 The term ‘‘controlled by a foreign adversary’’ means,
9 with respect to a covered company or other entity,
10 that such company or other entity is—
11 (A) a foreign person that is domiciled in,
12 is headquartered in, has its principal place of
13 business in, or is organized under the laws of
14 a foreign adversary country;
15 (B) an entity with respect to which a for
16 eign person or combination of foreign persons
17 described in subparagraph (A) directly or indi18 rectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or
19 (C) a person subject to the direction or
20 control of a foreign person or entity described
21 in subparagraph (A) or (B).
I do not see how the hypothetical scenarios you posed could ever manifest under a reasonable interpretation of this law. If that happens, the government went full tyrant and we have much bigger problems
Twenty Chinese companies each take a 1% stake in your startup. Your company is now "controlled by a foreign adversary".
The US Federal government went full tyrant over 100 years ago and has never looked back since.
This has been a "much larger problem" for my entire life. The US federal government is the world's pre-eminent #1 purveyor of global terrorism, if you measure global terrorism as the threat of the use of force to compel other entities to take positions and actions that they would not take of their own free will.
The bill only applies to applications operated or controlled by ByteDance, TikTok or any subsidiary/successor to ByteDance or TikTok or one controlled directly or indirectly by them.
You're referring to section (g)(3)(A)(i) and (g)(3)(A)(ii). Those are two of the categories the bill applies to under (g)(3)(A), however, you've completely failed to mention the entirety of the (g)(3)(B) categories.
Categories the bill also applies to per (g)(3)(B) that you did not mention include:
(g)(3)(B)(i) - is controlled by a foreign adversary; and that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(g)(3)(B)(i)(I) - a public notice proposing such determination; and
(g)(3)(B)(i)(II) - a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
Maybe Biden decides that Hackernoon has users who are Russian state actors spreading "disinformation" (true, real, factual information that you were not supposed to know, like the lab leak hypothesis, Hunter Biden's laptop containing evidence of his corruption alongside a bunch of victimless "crimes", Nancy Pelosi committing illegal insider trading, Hilary Clinton operating an unlawful email server, etc), and therefore HN constitutes a "significant threat to the national security of the United States".
That sounds unrealistic to you? How about that happening to a politically disfavored owner of a company that is already being routinely snubbed by the white house, like Musk/Twitter?
Please reread the definition of "controlled by a foreign adversary" in section (g)(1)(B).
Hypothetical scenario: Twenty Chinese companies each take a 1% stake in your startup.
In that scenario, your company is now "controlled by a foreign adversary", and you, the non-foreign majority shareholder, can be forced to divest, under the current language of this bill.
Prohibitive to all except powerful global adversaries attempting to influence world events with unrealistically massive dark budgets that come from who knows where? The Pentagon's just failed it's financial audit for the 6th year in a row. The US citizens have no clue where those trillions went - and that's just the stuff that's on the budget that the public knows about. Who knows what other sources of funding they have? We know even going back to the church commission that the intelligence agencies commit crimes in the course of intelligence gathering, all perfectly excusable with some hand waving and invocation of the magic spell "matter of national security". We also know US intelligence agencies routinely cooperate with foreign partners to spy on people those spies can't spy on due to constitutional restrictions, and then share the intelligence. It's a quid-pro-quo arrangement where they both serve as loopholes for eachother's constitutional protections. Who's to say the CIA doesn't have a few contacts over at the Chinese equivalent who would happily allow Chinese citizens to take partial control of an American company... it's a win for China, and it would be a win for American intelligence who wanted to "frame" a domestic media empire, guilty of disobedience with the unspoken mandates of ideological conformity enforcement, such as Twitter. It's a win-win for everyone except Twitter, the Twitter shareholders, and the Twitter customers who valued their free speech in that situation.
You can call that possibility a far-fetched fever dream, you can resort to personal attacks against my character, but no matter what refutation you offer, my amygdala's response is "just give it a few years, let's wait and see". I don't mind admitting if I'm wrong and nothing like that ever happens. I'd hope for as much were I not so rationally pessimistic.
If China / TikTok hadn’t overplayed the hand, they wouldn’t lose this weapon. Now they likely will (good thing)