House votes to ban TikTok in the U.S. if it's not sold

I heard inside info from the hill. Apparently a few weeks ago when TikTok got thousands of kids to call their congresspeople, it tipped a ton of the people on the fence to the “hell yes” category. Many offices got more calls than they do in a month that one day. TikTok showed how powerful it is, right there, right then.<p>If China &#x2F; TikTok hadn’t overplayed the hand, they wouldn’t lose this weapon. Now they likely will (good thing)

I don&#x27;t think TikTok is itself any worse than our own domestic brain liquefying apps like Twitter, and thus the ban&#x27;s surface reasoning is specious at best, but I&#x27;m fully onboard with reciprocity. If China won&#x27;t let US companies operate in China, the US shouldn&#x27;t let Chinese companies operate in the US.

I get that China is dangerous and TikTok is terrible for society, but this sets a dangerous precedent that the government can just ban any social media site it considers a threat now.

On the other side, China blocks WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, Telegram on the Chinese App Store.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40085214">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40085214</a> &quot;Apple deletes WhatsApp, Threads from China app store on orders from Beijing&quot; (110 points, 1 day ago, 127 comments)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40092127">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40092127</a> &quot;Apple Pulls WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and Threads from App Store in China&quot; (7 points, 1 day ago, 6 comments)

What stops the group of investors that acquires TikTok from having ByteDance US (or ByteDance Beijing) operate the platform behind the scenes?<p>Why does some US entity that probably contributed nothing to TikTok&#x27;s success get to financially benefit from acquiring TikTok by force?<p>What good will having someone else operate TikTok (who might not be technically adept enough to do this) do to curb the propaganda concerns the US Gov is alleging? If the operator isn&#x27;t a tech company that is comfortable with webscale, wouldn&#x27;t propaganda accelerate?<p>I really dislike TikTok&#x27;s social influence (despite its engineering and AI contributions being technical marvels), but if the US Gov is really concerned about national security, they should just ban it; no sales.

[dupe]<p>Proper URL: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;04&#x2F;20&#x2F;1245594589&#x2F;house-approves-bill-tiktok-ban" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;04&#x2F;20&#x2F;1245594589&#x2F;house-approves-bil...</a><p>Discussion here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40099135">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40099135</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40099350">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40099350</a>

Real reason why this is happening now.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&#x2F;short-reads&#x2F;2024&#x2F;04&#x2F;02&#x2F;younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&#x2F;short-reads&#x2F;2024&#x2F;04&#x2F;02&#x2F;younger-a...</a>

This sets the precedent to do the exact same thing to domestic companies if the government feels that the public is being &quot;manipulated,&quot; or data being used, in a way it doesn&#x27;t like.<p>If the rationale was solely tit for tat, &quot;China does this to our tech companies, so we&#x27;re simply doing the same,&quot; that would actually be significantly more palatable.

It’s fascinating to me how if elites care about something, it happens immediately, whereas if regular people care about it, it is difficult if not impossible to get done.

Let us lean into McCarthyism without hesitation. Nothing can go wrong.

We reek of fear. Long-term this will hurt us. Our economic warfare is forcing the world to cut us out.

Doesn&#x27;t this set a precedence for other countries to ban U.S based social media companies?

They can come together for culture war BS toward China &#x2F; saber-rattling but there’s a complete inability to do anything to help citizens.

&gt; 360-to-58 vote,<p>This is strong bipartisan support.<p>In fact, I bet those 58 votes are now under investigation by more then the whips.<p>Tiktok is going to be banned. As it should be no doubt.

I think it will get sold pretty quickly. There&#x27;s just too much money involved, too many Gen Z eyeballs, to go away.<p>TikTok is a capitalist narcotic.

This is government censorship

The sad thing is, this bill isn&#x27;t limited to Tik-Tok. The language was deliberately made overly broad. I would not be surprised if this is eventually used to force American-owned, American-controlled founders to divest ownership of their own companies because of actions taken by other people.<p>There are two parties in this country, the stupid one and the evil one. Whenever they eagerly get together and push &quot;bipartisan&quot; legislation, that&#x27;s when I worry the most about whatever stupid, evil thing they are up to these days.

Banning each other makes us as mediocre, if not low, as our competitors.