I mean does it work? Other than profit making for the consulting companies?
Like someone else pointed out, if people are hiring them in order to provide cover for decision making, then maybe the whole thing being a charade is the point.
>owever, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
How is it self-incrimination? That logic doesn't work.
80% of TikTok's users are outside of the U.S., why would they sell the whole thing?
And the law is written in a way that there is no value to just sell the American operation without the algorithm, they have to sell the whole thing, including the algorithm, in order for there to be a serious buyer.
It's technology highway robbery. Imagine if China told Apple "sell to us or be banned", we'd tell them to pound sand too.
The problem of allowing government banning propaganda is it allows government to ban anything they label as propaganda. There is no law defining what's propaganda, so you just end up with the government being able to ban any information they don't like.
Imagine the government drums up for another illegal war like Iraq using fake evidence, and we ban all counter evidence as "foreign propaganda". Do you not see how dangerous that gets?
>That, for me, is enough of a reason to ban it and justify it under our constitution
The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled in the past foreign propaganda is protected speech under First Amendment.
You cannot strip American citizens' rights to receive foreign propaganda if they choose to do so.
>There are a bunch and they are very easy to find.
Really? Because the U.S. government, in their own court filing, have openly admitted that there is no evidence of TikTok's wrong doing in terms of manipulating information.
I don't think it gets much more authoritative than U.S. government's own court filing.
The link you provided has been debunked over and over again. It was a paid-for study aimed to generate certain conclusion.
And its methodology is silly at best, insane at worst (uses U.S. social media company as a control group for neutrality on China lmao).
If you do understand First Amendment then you should also understand that foreign propaganda is protected speech, and is not treated as yelling fire in a crowded theater:
>It is illegal if it is paid for foreign state and undeclared.
Good. Because ByteDance has never tried to hide the fact that it's a Chinese company. So that argument wouldn't matter even if there are evidence of them pushing Chinese propaganda.
Except it is. The Supreme Court has actually ruled that the First Amendment rights for Americans to receive foreign propaganda, even during the Cold War:
I don't think you know what the First Amendment is. Not only does it guarantee freedom of expression, but also freedom to receive other's expression and speech.
The U.S. government is not allowed to ban any foreign books, movies, or even propaganda.
I really wish people like you do a little bit research before making such a confident statement like that.
There research is not credible because their only "evidence" is that when using certain keywords, Instagram and YT returned more "anti-China" content than TikTok.
So instead of arguing the U.S. social media has an anti-China bias, they argued that it's the evidence of TikTok being more pro-China.
Using American social media as the control group for neutrality on China is absolutely insane.
The most likely cause is that TikTok is just a lot less political and more international than YT and Instagram.
For rest of the world, people do not automatically associate words like "Xinjiang" to "Chinese government oppression", the fact that they expect that to be the top result can be argued that American media is the one manipulating information.
>Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about.
If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government, because it has repeatedly said there is no evidence of such and any threat remains hypothetical.
Except the whole reason for the TikTok bill is that information/speech will be under Chinese government control on TikTok and that can be weaponized.
So make up your mind, if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed.
If you say it's not about information suppression, then you can't use the "Chinese propaganda" argument, which is used by pretty much all ban supporters.
>This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
>Deliberately misinforming people, especially under a foreign state payroll, is illegal.
First of all if you have any evidence of TikTok engaging in it, you should present it since even our government have said there is no such evidence and that possibility remains hypothetical.
Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.
> Removing the platform entirely is not censorship. Especially when everyone will just shift to Instagram, Youtube etc.
It is, because politicians voted for the bill have openly admitted the Israel-Gaza content is what pushed them to vote for the ban. Instagram, YT, etc are under U.S. control and engage in sufficient self-censorship when it comes the Israel-Gaza conflict in order to make Israel look good.
>multitude of copy cat apps for their freedom of speech.
Except they can't. All of the other apps are under U.S. government control and have engaged in severe censorship on certain topics such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Even the politicians who voted for the bill have openly admitted that making Israel looking bad is the reason they are banning TikTok.