Today the House passed a bill to effectively ban TikTok unless it's acquired by an American company:
Republican leaders fast-tracked the bill through the House with limited debate, and it passed on a lopsided vote of 352 to 65, reflecting widespread backing for legislation that would take direct aim at China in an election year.
I know I'm talking my book here, but I'm skeptical of any bill that passes by a huge margin like that. I mean, Democrats and Republicans couldn't muster 352 votes for a Mother's Day resolution these days, but they're all willing to ban TikTok? This smacks of panic and election year pandering.
I wonder how effective it would be anyway? The bill would ban TikTok from app stores or from being hosted on US web servers. That's a big blow. But it wouldn't do anything about the gazillion people who already have the app, and moving TikTok to, say, Chinese servers wouldn't be any big deal. Future users could either download the app manually—which is tricky but hardly impossible—or use a web version. This is obviously not ideal for TikTok, but it would probably work.
If this happened, it would make things even worse from a national security perspective. TikTok would have no incentive to keep US data in Texas and no incentive to host its service anywhere but China. And teens might actually be attracted to TikTok even more once it becomes forbidden fruit.
We'll see what the Senate does. But I do wish that Congress had a little more faith in the American system of democracy and open debate. Even if TikTok is subtly promoting Chinese propaganda, what do you think is the best way of fighting it? The Chinese system of banning and censoring, or the American system of letting everyone fight it out in the marketplace of ideas? Sign me up for the latter, please, and not just because of a knee-jerk love of all things American. I genuinely think that in the long run our way of doing things is a lot more productive than the Chinese way.
The most bipartisan agreement in decades and Kevin thinks that is a sign they're all wrong?
From Matt Y:
Back on February 6, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that, in his opinion, Bud Light had learned its lesson from the backlash to their Dylan Mulvaney marketing deal and so it was okay for conservatives to drink their beer again. Why the flip-flop? Well, it turned out that “a top Republican lobbyist for the company is set to host a fundraiser for the former president next month, with some tickets going at $10,000 each.”
"The most bipartisan agreement in decades and Kevin thinks that is a sign they're all wrong?"
The resolution approving the Iraq war had huge bipartisan support. Turns out they were all wrong.
Bipartisan support on its own does not reflect whether something is good or bad. On this issue, much like on the Iraq War resolution, the evidence and rationale to support the bill seems incredibly flimsy.
The most bipartisan agreement in decades and Kevin thinks that is a sign they're all wrong?
Your sentence implies opposition to banning TikTok is an exotic, niche view. It's not. WaPo's editorial page came out against the ban (and yes, it will be a ban). It doesn't get much more "establishmentarian" than that.
Banning TikTok from app stores would have a huge impact on iPhone users and apparently the majority of teens are iPhone users. On the other hand, Apple appears to be moving to allowing large app distributors to host their own app downloads.
While I agree with Kevin overall here, I have to say our marketplace of ideas hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in recent years.
yeah, any system in which President Donald Trump is as likely as a coinflip is a bad system.
Any reason to ban TT is fine by me
Isn't it possible to get tech companies to prevent access to servers hosting TikTok as part of anti-virus software?
Much simpler solution.
You ban all advertising on TikTok aimed at US users and any transmission to ByteDance of user identifying information, tracking information, etc. so they have more trouble sending relevant ads to US users.
If ByteDance continues offering TikTok to US users with no advertising revenue then it becomes absolutely obvious to all that it is a Chinese government op, not a profit maximizing private company and we can handle it appropriately.
China made US and western companies jump through hoops to enter their market. Pushing DanceByte to divest from CCP isn't really that big of a deal
So anyone can access American products in china but no American can access Chinese products. And we claim we are the land of the free,
I concur with Kevin here. Banning TikTok is contrary to what smart and confident democracies do. Even if we're not as smart and confident as we ought to be at times, we should at least fake it just this once.
If principle doesn't stop the effort to ban the app, maybe politics will. I can't see why Schumer would bring it up for a vote now, or why Biden would want to sign it.
It's March. The election is in eight months. The bill triggers a ban in six months if ByteDance isn't sold. Do you want to risk pissing off an important demographic right before an election? Especially with Trump publicly against the ban? It would be a very prominent campaign issue that would get a lot of loud debate every freaking day. It would be dumb for Democrats to sign on to a ban. I expect that Schumer never brings it to a vote. I doubt Biden wants the bill coming to his desk.
Would Dems pass it after Biden is reelected? I doubt that too. At that time, the political imperative may not matter but principle would prevail.
I don't listen to Freakonomics podcasts normally ... but last week I did.
The episode is about the "social media trap," the phenomenon in which people use social media platforms even though they wish they did not. As I recall, a survey of TikTok users indicated that they would on the whole support making the platform illegal but as long as the platform is available FOMO keeps them using the service.
The discussion is not about the current legislation, or unique to any platform. It's about users spending their time doing X but wishing they could be doing something else ("I wish there were a law against doing what I'm doing..."). But as long as X is available and others are using the service, the user of X feels compelled to continue using the service.
It's entirely hypothetical and I doubt most TikTok users would be relieved to see the service go away. I suspect many of them would be rather mad about it.
That's not really true. If I recall correctly, ByteDance relocated user data to US-based servers. US would simply have those servers shut down. Access to TikTok IP address blocks could be, err, blocked through DNS servers and ISPs. Over time, as people replaced their phones, the app would not be available for reinstallation.
But I don't see ByteDance wanting to defy US government. They would simply shut down access on their own.
Is that your solution for FNC, too?
If DNS and IP addresses redirect, it wouldn't matter if people sideloaded the app or used the www to access. ByteDance would have to play a cat and mouse game on this, constantly revising the app to redirect around IP and DNS blocking. But it would also come with consequences w/ the USG and anyway users would get tired of the constant outages followed by the need to update their apps.
There would still be the question of network latency and bandwidth. Assuming they kept their US user base…
Maybe if China hacked our networks less we'd trust them more? just imagine the botnet you could create with ill intent and access to millions of devices.
They've already done a denial of service attack on Congressional phone lines. That was a really dumb use of their power under the circumstances.
While I don't ordinarily even consider such bans, the fact that some European countries have already adopted them, & one of my senators recommended the ban, for once I'm wondering if Warner (& his fellow committee member, Rubio, normally someone whose opinion I never can agree with) is right.
Not a single European country—nor any Western democracy—has banned TikTok. Like the United States (up to now) restrictions have been limited to government phones and computers.
Countries the US will be joining if it bans TikTok are Somalia, Afghanistan and (yes) China.
It's not just data security. The far bigger concern is that the Chinese will feed propaganda to TikTok users, the way Russia did with FB and Twitter. This is one of the many reasons Hillary lost by a hair. As an example, Russians created false accounts that fed Hillary-is-a-racist memes to Black voters in Detroit and other swing-state cities. It don't take much.
"the way Russia did with FB and Twitter"
Isn't this the best argument against this bill? Simply saying that China can't own TiK-Tok means squat when it comes to the ability of a foreign nation being able to spread propaganda in the US.
Whether it's FB, Twitter (and now X), YouTube, Fox News, whatever, private ownership, including US private ownership of entities able to distribute propaganda provides no safeguard against shitfuckery. So what's the upside?
On the downside, it gives credence to the argument that the US is no better than China when it comes to censoring stuff they don't like.
Being unable to eliminate shitfuckery is not an argument against reducing shitfuckery. The question is how much should propaganda (which all mass communication is) should be subject to foreign government influence. The alternate question is why is any group allowed to promote mass propaganda, but that would requiring questioning US corporate power.
I'm all for any bill that would apply to all mass media, but when the sole target is the one foreign owned company, this despite that the US owned ones have actually been proven to be tools of foreign governments, it reeks of xenophobia.
The biggest fears of what Tik-Tok could do have actually already been realized by the US companies who bent over backwards to the dollars from foreign and domestic enemies of the US, yet there is zero interest in controlling those.
As Kevin points out, basically no one gets news from TikTok.
Is a law forcing the sale of TikTok or banning it a Bill of Attainder?
That's a great question.
I had figured the language of the legislation was written not to apply to TikTok alone but that's as specific a bill as you can imagine.
FWIW here's what the Federalist Society has to say:
"The Supreme Court has not decided whether the Bill of Attainder Clause protects entities such as corporations."
However, other court cases (e.g., Huawei) have assumed corporations are protected. Still, the FS argues that a suit by TikTok would fail because the bill lacks the type of punishment attainder requires. I'm not sure I buy that argument, but I am (thankfully) not a lawyer.
Bills targeting foreign governments are by definition not bills of attainder.
It's all political theater. The stated reason was 'national security"--data on our people going to the evil Chinese government. The real reason is that it's easy to dump on the evil Chinese in an election year. Same reasoning applies to the import of (superior) electric cars. Our good paying jobs will leave our shores. Gasp!
If Congress was so worried about national security, they'd pass strict data privacy laws, as well as abrogate the laws that allow our national security apparatus to snoop on us. But that won't happen because there will be squawking by deep-pocketed political donors.
I had assumed the legislation's language would compell US ISPs to refrain from connecting to TikTok's servers. But apparently that's not the case?
So yeah, Kevin's right. People won't even need VPNs to use TikTok (which, ironically, is required in China as China blocks TikTok from domestic users).
I'm both a bit more relaxed upon hearing this news, and more convinced there's no way Beijing will allow the forced sale. This is all assuming the bill even passes the Senate, which looks far from assured—or survives court challenges.
That confident, eh? Let's see if there's precedence... https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/grindr-sold-china-national-security/
China peoples bad. So so bad. Must cut all ties with China peoples!
I really don't think you have appreciated the problem with TikTok.
Here is a piece on deepfakes: https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/deepfakes-and-election-disinformation/ with a link to a news article.
In this piece about deepfakes, it mentions how the Russians and Chinese are leading the way with disinformation campaigns employing deepfakes, and how the Chinese government uses TikTok to spread the disinformation, including deepfakes.
We are in a war, aimed at tearing down democracy itself. Trump has promised to remove the thousands of Deep State traitors in our military and intelligence branches if re-elected.
And you are saying, "oh, I don't see a problem"
Yikes.
Meanwhile, Facebook, X, Amazon, Apple, and Google hoover up data on all of us and they do who-knows-what with it. This is fine.