https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
This bill prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok). However, the prohibition does not apply to a covered application that executes a qualified divestiture as determined by the President.
Under the bill, a foreign adversary controlled application is directly or indirectly operated by (1) ByteDance, Ltd. or TikTok (including their subsidiaries or successors); or (2) a social media company that is controlled by a foreign adversary and has been determined by the President to present a significant threat to national security. The prohibition does not apply to an application that is primarily used to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.
The bill authorizes the Department of Justice to investigate violations of the bill and enforce the bill’s provisions. Entities that violate the bill are subject to civil penalties based on the number of users.
The bill requires a covered application to provide a user with all available account data (including posts, photos, and videos) at the user’s request before the prohibition takes effect.
The bill gives the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to the bill. Further, a challenge to the bill must be brought within 165 days after the bill’s enactment date. A challenge to any action, finding, or determination under the bill must be brought with 90 days of the action, finding, or determination.
To me this just shows how broken Congress is. US social media companies have been collecting our data, building profiles of us, manipulating us with the content they show in various ways, harming teen mental health, and all of that for decades, but Congress did nothing. Facebook in particular was used as a tool to manipulate the 2016 election by Russia in various ways, but apart from some show hearings, Congress did nothing. But TikTok is alleged to do the same thing (remember nobody has actually shown proof that the CCP is like directing TikTok to promote pro-China content for Americans), and we get bipartisanship somehow. That vote was more bipartisan than a stopgap bill to prevent a government shutdown.
And the reason is “China bad” is a message that voters agree with, and because Google and Meta are more than happy to reward these people for helping to kill their biggest rival in social media. At the end of the day TikTok users are forced onto less desirable platforms so their data can be harvested by American companies and all that, our brave congresspeople get to pretend to be “tough on China”, and Big Tech rakes the profits they were losing by being outcompeted in the market. So few in Congress, on either side, have integrity.
China calling the US a bully for doing this is hilarious
Unfortunate seeing something opposed by Maxwell Frost, Jamal Bowman, the ACLU, EFF, HRW and others that’s going to give whoever’s the President a new power to restrict speech and association, but that’s pretty on brand for this House I suppose
I am INCREDIBLY conflicted on this.
On the one hand? Tiktok is demonstrably horrible for humanity. It is like we saw the media illiteracy and attention span murdering aspects of youtube/instagram and cranked it up to 11. Like, I know every “generation” hates what the next one are into but holy shit is tiktok all about sensory overload and incomprehensible speeds and dialogue (if you noticed a LOT of youtubers starting to remove any and all pauses between words and sentences, that is why).
And… we definitely have a lot of reason to be afraid of foreign governments influencing elections and internal politics. In large part because we have watched it happen for the past decade or so (and even done it to a few governments ourselves).
So, on all those grounds: Ban the fuck out of tiktok
But… I also REALLY do not like governments blocking free speech. No, I don’t mean not protecting people who need to say the n-word to order a Big Mac. I mean removing platforms for discussion. Twitter is already basically dead for these purposes. And it isn’t like we don’t already have platforms for third parties to influence elections on…
So… I really don’t know. I would hope we could actually base this on medical/psychological experts and analysis but that isn’t how laws work. And… maybe the world is “better” with the inability to listen to any pauses in sentences and to need at least three different subway surfers streams on any given display while someone talks about how they are going to go get a chicken sandwich tomorrow. I want to say “the kids” are wrong but I also can’t stop feeling like Armin Tamzarian.
Things like this are why I’m so grumpy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Washington — The House on Wednesday passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell its stake in the massively popular social media platform.
The House fast-tracked the legislation, known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, by bringing it up under a procedure that required the support of two-thirds of members for passage.
TikTok has repeatedly been targeted by lawmakers seeking to restrict the app over concerns that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to hand over the data of its 170 million American users.
The U.S. “has not been able to give hard evidence to prove the so-called threats from TikTok to U.S. national security,” Liu said in a statement, calling on the U.S. to “provide an open, fair, equal and non-discriminatory business environment to companies of all countries operating in the U.S.”
“I still have concerns about naming a specific company in legislation, but it feels like this House bill has momentum,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday.
Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously advanced it after officials from the Justice Department and FBI gave members a classified briefing on TikTok.
The original article contains 935 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Oh sure. But I’m confident Biden will use it responsibly. And I can’t really think farther ahead than the next three months, so…
Fucking America First bullshit.
Yea, TikTok is highly problematic… but no more so than Meta or Google.
