The way I see this is that democracy is extremely susceptible to tools that can change public opinion en masse. This of course applies to Western social media as much as TikTok, and I'd love to see regulation around all social media algorithms to ensure they're unbiased. I see this as a good start to counter a real threat, which is China's ability to influence US elections through TikTok.
It is not just democracy. All governance systems are susceptible to mass communication tools that can change public opinion, be it books, radio, tv, news organizations, or tiktok. It is why many non democratic countries do not have freedom of press, and a highly censored internet. This is a main contributor to Arab Spring.
It is just sad that even US is susceptible to this.
Well mass manipulation of the people is how the USA functions. This is what Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote about extensively in their book Manufacturing Consent from 1988. So it is no wonder it works when other people do it too. I agree though, it is sad, or frustrating, upsetting, infuriating, that the USA works like that.
This is the same logic as would be used in banning the translation of the bible or the printing press. For any sufficiently concerned state, 'unbiased' means 'agrees with me'. For example, it may be seen in the USA to be 'unbiased' to be completely uncritical of Israel (anti-Zionism is anti-semitism according the US congress bill H.Res.894). However, this is not the case anywhere else in the world, including Israel (which criticizes itself sometimes), in fact it would seem quite insane.
That said I think some regulatory control is needed. There needs to be some sort of accountability e.g. for intentional propagation of fake news or censorship or defamation. This is no different than requirements for ethical behavior in other industries. Just like we regulate public companies in general we should be able to impose some requirements on any business that distributes media. Free speech for individuals but if you are a business or a media "provider" you need to meet a somewhat higher bar? I think we used to rely on journalistic standards or self regulation but with "new" media (and maybe even with old media) this seems to be not working that well any more. There's a fine line there for sure but seems like whether China owns some social media or someone with US citizenship we still want to have guards against harms this can cause. The amount of power these companies wield is scary.
China has already indicated that because the sale would require a "technology export" of the algorithm, it would need their approval. And also that they would not approve it.
So if China has already made it clear it considers a TikTok sale illegal, this is a ban.
That being said, you don't get Nancy Pelosi and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the same side unless there is some serious fire behind all of the smoke. My guess is everyone who has seen the classified info agrees this ban is too critical to even play games with it.
Microsoft will dust off it's previous merger plan from the last time this political football was punted and fill superfluousmanagement and "trust and safety" positions with old national security alumni. The surveillance will continue.
There's many companies that have reproduced the tictok algorithm. Surely if it was sold, the multibillion dollar company would have no issue with that aspect.
Facebook Reels and Youtube Shorts have pretty good implementations at this point, especially facebook, it is kind of scary. But I didn't use the original TikTok app so I don't know if TikTok is somehow better than these (I only started watching them because they started placing them in my Facebook and Youtube feed, sneaky!).
"you don't get Nancy Pelosi and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the same side unless there is some serious fire"
All you need to convince American politicians of anything is jingling keys and cash. Plus MTG opposed the original TikTok bill, they only voted in favor when it was packed together with sending money for Israel.
> I'd love to see regulation around all social media algorithms to ensure they're unbiased.
The bias is a feature. They just don't like the fact that they can't control the bias on TikTok so it spews Chinese propaganda instead of Western propaganda.
You are free to post whatever you want on a different platform. Banning TikTok and its algorithm has nothing to do with free speech. It's funny this always gets brought up, like what is TikTok allowing you to say that you can't say on FB, YT, etc?
Not a problem as long as there are other tools to speak. You have no right to YouTube or Facebook because neither are necessary for your free speech. This isn't complicated.
Overall we would want to give good education to children but sadly many parents resort to electronics quite early. There really should be a law to ban cell phones and pad for children less than 5.
Improving the economics would help too. Raising a kid when both parents probably have to work presents challenges that just don't exist if most careers could support a family on a single income.
