***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[flyeed]

His top donor is AIPAC

 

[mplsdunk]

 

[Mark Antony]

The right is so convoluted and contrived. Old people are a target now?

 

[Mark Antony]

Honestly I haven't kept up with any of the recent tiktok stuff, but I'm sure I would want the Chinese gov't to have less access to my data than any American entity. Also people don't really understand how their data is used and the time to pull back has long passed.

 

[RustyShackleford]

His top donor is AIPAC

We're gonna need another Snickers

 

[mplsdunk]

Honestly I haven't kept up with any of the recent tiktok stuff, but I'm sure I would want the Chinese gov't to have less access to my data than any American entity. Also people don't really understand how their data is used and the time to pull back has long passed.

I just liked the post. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t use tik tok.

All this means to me is our data is worth more than we know and we should probably monetize it to make ourselves money.

 

[TooOlfForThisIsh]

A few things that seem obvious to me:

1. The United States has a compelling interest in mitigating the influence of foreign governments on it's own population: see foreign agent act.

2. The United States has a robust framework for accomplishing 1. in the context of traditional media. For example, foreign owners of American media must register as foreign agents; their activity is monitored.

3. The current bill is, at best, a hamfisted, poorly-considered mechanism towards 1. It likely doesn't go far enough in some ways, and is completely unrealistic about the timelines required to tackle the nuances of its slapdash approach.

4. Given the complete dysfunction of Congress, and particularly the Republican conference, we are unlikely too see the kind of nuanced legislation needed to establish a regulatory framework for new media that would adequately handle 1.)

5. Congress, and particularly the Republican conference, is obviously the greatest threat to American national security - far greater in effect than Russia, China, or even climate change - precisely because it prevents the United States from doing *anything* meaningful about any of those threats.

6. ByteDance will be operating TikTok in the United States on November 5th, 2024.

7. I have no reasonable view on who will control it on March 13, 2025.

 

[gry60]

The elephant in the room over this ban is the way tiktok has shown Americans, especially younger adults what is really going on in Gaza and the US’ elderly Zionist ruling class can’t stand it.

This could be said about any social media. Tiktok wasn't a thing when people overseas discovered American poverty during Katrina. Tiktok wasn't a thing when Twitter was highlighting the pervasiveness of the mistreatment of Black Americans. Tiktok is a national security threat, not because of what Gazans show on it, but because of how they collect info on Americans, and who has access to it.

It would do well for the left to stop ignoring the reality of foreign affairs and the need for defense. Just because pacifism direct your foreign relations efforts towards mutual cooperation doesn't mean that the people you cooperate with will stop wanting to eat your lunch. Sometimes, the hand you extend can lead you to lose your arm. Just look at the relations between Europe and Russia prior to the Ukrainian invasion: look at how they believed that they could temper Putin's imperialistic ambitions with trade, despite 2008 and 2014. Not every country, not every leader is on that "let's live together in peace and harmony" ****; also, foreign leadership can change from a cooperative entity to a competitive one, and part of leading a society is being ready when these changes happen.

Honestly I haven't kept up with any of the recent tiktok stuff, but I'm sure I would want the Chinese gov't to have less access to my data than any American entity. Also people don't really understand how their data is used and the time to pull back has long passed.

In a world where personal information is being weaponized to unprecedented levels, in a world of deep fakes and ID theft, it is insane that some folks would NOT worry about what a foreign entity could do with their personal info. Let American companies, subject to American laws that the American public can influence, collect our info. How do you submit a request to a company incorporated in China to delete the stuff they have on you? What kind of impact do you think an American ballot measure would have on the behavior of an intrusive foreign company that doesn't need to have a physical presence in the US?

 

[Frankie Blue]

 

[Quincy McCall]

Rather they spent time fixing real and present problems, but I get it, I guess

 

[Based Jesus]

The average voter under 25 is latching on to the Gaza angle as we speak. There was no reality in which the american voting base was going to be sensible about this.

 

[mplsdunk]

Biden gonna come with a broccoli cut and veto it for them.

 

[Mark Antony]

Rather they spent time fixing real and present problems, but I get it, I guess

It can and should be both.

 

[rexanglorum]

Whoa, slippery slope much?

This has nothing to do with Gaza and you know it. This ban is really about doing to China what they have been doing to us for decades. If you want to make money over here, you play by our rules.

Them using the product to influence our population is an added threat. China is to not be trusted, point blank period. Besides, this isn't a ban, it's a forced spin-off. Try logging into IG in China, that's a real "ban"

You're Gaza argument would first have to prove that sentiment has changed because of Tik- Tok, debatable at best:

Americans' Views of the Israel-Hamas War

65% of Americans say Hamas bears a lot of responsibility for the current conflict, compared with 35% who say this about the Israeli government.

www.pewresearch.org

The above article does mention support for Gaza in higher number based on age, but there is also disapproval of his handling Biden based on party (shocker) I also would argue that younger people always skewed as Pro-Palestinian

Of course, there’s been political will to ban/force a sale for years. And you’re also right that China is not a model to follow for a free and open internet.

Look, when you see brutal images coming out of Gaza every day, you’re going to be passionate about defending the platform that doesn’t censor these images (Meta, Facebook and Instagram). Do I have lots of data to allow me to be certain that TikTok is influencing US public opinion. But at the same time, when every other major cable news outlet and social media outlet isn’t showing images from the streets of Gaza, it’s pretty easy to figure out, through process of elimination, which one is having an impact.

And things have changed since October, and every day I see posts from indigenous Americans linking their struggle to struggle of the Palestinians. The same has been true for Americans who oppose police militarization. Israeli “defense” forces train our own killer cops. Advocates for prison reform/abolition have pointed out connections with America’s carceral state and Israeli’s carceral state. Likewise when it comes to the concentration camps on the US-Mexico border.

I suppose if you see the carnage in Gaza as being the result of one bad Israeli PM and the situation that is Gaza, as this very unique result of overlapping historical forces that can’t be replicated, I can understand why you’d see Gaza in isolation. If you believe the narrative that the US is a flawed nation but still the least bad force in the world, I’m sure that seeing someone make connections between seemingly disperate things sounds like the ranting of Alex Jones.

But if your first principles are that the US is a settler colonial state that is unreformable at its core and that Israel is an extension of that settler colonial project, you will see what Israel is doing in Gaza as a template for how states will react to inconvenient marginalized, stateless, and displaced groups. And there will be a lot more stateless and/or displaced people in this century. And from there, it stands to reason that the states doing the violence would prefer that its full citizens, its protected population, not have access to platforms which show the brutality that their state is committing.

Again, it’s really about first principles were are ultimately subjective. But I hope people can see that if you have the first principles that I have, it’s not that hard to see connections between these nominally separate issues.

I agree that it’s not a case where the US bans tiktok and then boom, half the population of the isn’t allowed to travel more than a few miles and the US Marines will be slaughtering every migrant on or near the US Border. There are many points where we’ll have input, but if we don’t look at these issues holistically, the chances of full climate change driven barbarism being our future, that goes up.

Stopping Israel’s actions in Gaza (or at the very least, reducing it to pariah status because of its war crimes, as well as the gleeful reactions of ordinary Israelis to those war crimes, were documented and widely circulated across the globe), will save lives in the future. Conversely, Israel’s ability to kill and displace every Palestinian living in Gaza will imperil millions of lives going forward.

Again, if TikTok is banned, the world must find other ays to expose Israel’s actions. In fact, ban or not, I need to get started with setting up a various decentralized social media accounts. Elon Musk’s incompetence with Twitter had me looking into a Mastodon but I need to get a schematic of how to set it up.

 

[rexanglorum]

Biden gonna come with a broccoli cut and veto it for them.

“Hello fellow young people! Who here likes to goon? (Applause) who likes to edge?! (Applause) and who here has been mewing?! (Thunderous applause)”

 

[mplsdunk]

tik tok ban is cap. Fr fr

Vetoed

 

[elpablo21]

Hopefully IG is next.

 

[Frankie Blue]

"CNN has spoken to another person with a similar story. This person, to whom CNN has granted anonymity so as to avoid harassment, recalled that several years ago, Rodgers claimed, “Sandy Hook never happened…All those children never existed. They were all actors.”

When asked about the grieving parents, the source recalled Rodgers saying, “They’re all making it up. They’re all actors.”

 

[rexanglorum]

Three things

1.) Is Israeli leadership for, against, or neutral about a potential ban of TikTok?

2.) It’s totally rational to ban TikTok from all devices used by government officials. The potential for blackmail/espionage opportunities is huge. Beyond that, what danger does the Chinese government pose to the average, private citizen in the US. How does China having a bunch of meta data put me in danger? What exactly would China do that the US government is currently not doing with our data?

3.) great responses everyone, I’ll address more of them later.

 

[mplsdunk]

The “both sides are the same” is about to go crazy considering trump was trying to do this.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

Ok osh kosh bosh I see have had enough Spice to understand my visions. So I’ll keep it simple. Would Netanyahu prefer tiktok be banned in the US or not?

1. Bibi is an authoritarian, if he could make himself god emperor worm of the universe and usher in 1000 years of darkness he would. so what?

2. You can find plenty of online platforms and communities with leftist being mad about Israel-Palestine. tiktok is like one place. trust me there is no shortage. and any other online short form content platform that caters towards young people will ultimately have the same effect. like the idea of a ceaser in ancient Rome, once the idea is created, you can't simply get rid of by killing the man.

3. in living memory before Tiktok existed we had a president who was way more confrontational towards Isreal *cough* Barack *cough* Obama
no tiktk necessary.

4. Bibi behavior towards Biden is doing more than horrible leftist tiktok content to sway center left away from reflexive Israel support.

5. what's holding up bi partisan american support for israel is older voters, are they on tiktok consuming leftist content?

6. Not everything is Israel/Palestine and this desire to draw strained intersectional connections back to I/P just seems crazy to me.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

Im sure you all don't mean it this way, but this "Tiktok sale is a zionist plot" concept


just sounds like some "jews control the world" goofiness

 

[osh kosh bosh]

Three things

1.) Is Israeli leadership for, against, or neutral about a potential ban of TikTok?

Who cares?

2.) How does China having a bunch of meta data put me in danger? What exactly would China do that the US government is currently not doing with our data?

I just find this question baffling. You as american have a say in what YOUR government, decides to with whatever data they have. and you as an american can impact how american companies act.

You as an american have no impact over the the ethnic han chinese supremacist Xi Jinping dictatorship that runs china.

if they use their algorithm to polarize americans on support for Taiwan and start a war imperil the chip manufacturing that runs the global supply chains, that seems pretty bad for the average american.

 

[Brownstone]

Three things

1.) Is Israeli leadership for, against, or neutral about a potential ban of TikTok?

2.) It’s totally rational to ban TikTok from all devices used by government officials. The potential for blackmail/espionage opportunities is huge. Beyond that, what danger does the Chinese government pose to the average, private citizen in the US. How does China having a bunch of meta data put me in danger? What exactly would China do that the US government is currently not doing with our data?

3.) great responses everyone, I’ll address more of them later.

1.) Proof that IG and other platforms supress pro-palestinian posts ? vs Tik tok promoting pro-palestinian ones? As we all know to be the case....to pin Israel as a reason that Biden and others are legislating against Tik Tok infers that US Government's pro Israel sentiment (which every living soul regardless of where you stand knows) is a secret.

2.) US government doesn't have to prove anything here, and you know it. Truth is I want IG to kill Tik Tok, that is the operating field we are playing on in todays economy. Sorry. It's like people who bash banking and our banking system as being too big, take a look at chinese banks, I'd rather J.P. Morgan financing growth across the world over the Chinese Construction Bank.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

If anything I would bet Tiktok has been a net negative for the Palestinians.

- it's created a whole class of online media grifter saying toxic polarizing things that make negotiations more difficult not less.
- It has increased support for brain dead non starter one state solution pipe dreams that will never happen.
- it's increased jewish paranoia around anti semitism, leading them to continue to circle the wagons around support for Israel.