this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
371 points (96.0% liked)

politics

19107 readers
2652 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Regulations, subsidies, contracts - the government has a whole arsenal and near limitless resources to keep companies working within the US’s interest...

What is threatening about TikTok isn’t China’s control over it, but the US’s absence of control.

This feels like double speak... The US can both control a company with near limitless resources, but also the US has no control over.. a company. All of that applies to Facebook as well. Again the main difference being, China has part ownership of tiktok and therefore direct influence that the US doesn't have on many companies. The US doesn't have the kinds of control levers that a more authoritarian government like China has. Facebook, a large company can fight the US in courts to protect themselves. TikTok can not do the same with China.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Edit- you should insert a line break after your quoted text, that way the whole comment isn't presented as a part of a block quote

Except my point isn't to defend tiktok or china, it's to condemn all privately owned social media (including US companies), because without the user being in control over their content presentation pretty much any social media company can abuse their influence at the whim of their host government.

My point remains the same: the US has as much influence over domestic social media companies as China has over TikTok, and all privately controlled social media (or at least social media that is not within the user's control) aught to be banned, not just private social media that's owned by a foreign adversary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the suggestion on the quote.

Are you suggesting their should be a publicly owned social media instead? I don't quite see people being very happy about all privately owned social medias being banned working out well in the US.

I think what we do agree with is that currently, social medias are too influential with little oversight. Just seems like you feel that there isn't enough oversight over a private company to ever fix the issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Not at all - I think social media should follow an atomized federation model, as in lemmy, mastodon, ect. Distributed networks are far more robust against outside influence.

What I definitely don't want is for-profit private social media that is a completely proprietary black box - that enables both private and governmental influence without the knowledge of the users. The US banning tiktok basically just confirms (or adds to the suspicion) that the US govt has a comfortable amount of control over domestic social media, and is uncomfortable with foreign companies that are outside of their influence.

I suspect the ire at tiktok has a lot to do with the trend of increasingly left-leaning content on the platform - content that they have no ability to suppress.