When Trump suggested this, it was absurd according to the D, now Biden and the D are behind the ban, so the real issue, could it be that being Chinese controlled the Administration can't force them to censor news, but if it's sold to an American Company, the government could gain another huge ally in censoring content.


TikTok vows to fight 'unconstitutional' US ban

TikTok says it will challenge in court an "unconstitutional" law that could result in it being sold or banned in the United States.

President Biden has signed into law a bill which gives the social media platform's Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to divest the app or it will be blocked in the US.

The law has been introduced because of concerns TikTok might share user data with the Chinese government - claims it has always denied.

"We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts," said TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew.

"The facts, and the Constitution, are on our side... rest assured, we aren't going anywhere."

In a video posted on the platform, he lambasted the bill and called for people to share their stories of how TikTok had improved their lives.

"Make no mistake, this is a ban - a ban on TikTok, and a ban on you, and your voice," he said.

In a separate statement TikTok added that it believed "the facts and the law" were "clearly" on its side.

"The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S. data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation," it said.

The measure was passed as part of a package of four bills which also included military aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other US partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

It had widespread support from lawmakers, with 79 Senators voting for it and 18 against.

"For years we've allowed the Chinese Communist party to control one of the most popular apps in America... that was dangerously short-sighted," said Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee.

"A new law is going to require its Chinese owner to sell the app. This is a good move for America," he added.

TikTok has said ByteDance "is not an agent of China or any other country". ByteDance insists it is not a Chinese firm, pointing to the global investment firms that own 60% of it.

What to know about the US push to ban TikTok
Can TikTok's owner afford to lose its killer app?
Experts have told the BBC the bill is "a big deal" but have warned it faces multiple hurdles.

It could take several years before the app is blocked as legal action, likely all the way to the Supreme Court, would delay the process.

In November, a U.S. federal judge in Montana blocked an effort to ban TikTok within the state.

The popularity of the app with young Americans could also be problematic.

“About two in three young people in the US have a TikTok account," said Andrew Przybylski, professor of human behaviour and technology at Oxford University.

“The primary challenge is going to be on freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

"The UN Charter on the Rights of the Child is quite specific: young people have a right to information and a right to play, so I think it can be challenged on those grounds.”

Jennifer Huddleston from the Cato institute, in Washington, said any sale might be delayed because of the “considerable” regulatory scrutiny it would attract.

"Nine months is a rather quick timeframe for this size of a transaction - it's something that is likely to have further regulatory scrutiny even without the requirements in this proposal," she said.

"The question remains - what does it mean to even sell TikTok in the US, is that truly possible, and what would a buyer look like?"

Exactly who would be able to buy and operate it is also a big question - the price would likely be in the tens of billions of dollars, meaning there would be few potential buyers.

Braced for ban
Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, said TikTok users in the US had been bracing themselves for a ban "for quite some time".

"The Senate decision injects a heightened level of uncertainty into the livelihoods of countless content creators, influencers, and small business owners," she said.

If it is not sold in time, the app could be blocked in the country - the US says this is because it is concerned TikTok could be used to spy on Americans, or to spread propaganda.

TikTok gathers similar kinds of data to other apps, but the US is concerned this data could fall into the hands of the Chinese government - claims the company has always contested.

Elsewhere, the firm has agreed to suspend its TikTok Lite rewards programme, which pays users to spend time on the app in France and Spain.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton said the feature was "toxic and addictive", particularly when used by children, and threatened to block it unless action was taken.

The EU said its investigation into the feature would continue.

Link

MY FIL is convinced the Biden regime is now going to use this to go after and try and shut down Elon Musk and Twitter. That's why the Democrats suddenly got on board with this, they figured out another way to go after him.

13 year old girls finally have a political issue.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
MY FIL is convinced the Biden regime is now going to use this to go after and try and shut down Elon Musk and Twitter. That's why the Democrats suddenly got on board with this, they figured out another way to go after him.

I agree with your FI. if they first went after Twitter it would be too obvious. What non TicTok users don’t realize is that TicTok has a large conservative presence and that’s why the Democrats finally sprang into action.

That's a pretty good question, who really watches/uses TiKTok, wondered if there is a research company that compiles this stuff on internet site usage, found one and presuming it it reasonably correct on the data considering it's researching a chinese company, but, that company depends on demo's to sell advertising, nothing on the politics of the users, anywho, here's what they show:

Link

How Many Americans Use TikTok?
According to company data, TikTok had 150 million monthly active users in the U.S. in February 2023, an increase from 100 million reported in August 2020.

Kepios’s analysis suggests that TikTok has a 53.9% adult reach rate in the U.S..

According to eMarketer estimates, 45.3% of social media users in the U.S. use TikTok at least once a month.

45.3% of social media users in the U.S. use TikTok at least once a month
American adults spend over 4.43 billion total minutes per day on TikTok, behind Facebook with 5.2 billion minutes as of 2023. TikTok is forecasted to pass Facebook usage by 2025, eMarketer data shows.

U.S. Market penetration: Monthly U.S. TikTok users have now passed 150 million, equalling nearly half of America’s population.

U.S. average time on the app: Americans 18 and over are estimated to spend 55.8 minutes per day on TikTok.

Recent gender demographics in October 2023 show that around 49.2% of TikTok users worldwide were women, while another 50.8% were men.

Data on the age of users:

Even though more adults adopt the app, only 13.7% of their user base in the U.S. is aged 45 and over. In fact, 44.4% of TikTok users in the U.S. are aged 24 or under.

Here's a graph of users in the USA by age group



Top 5 Users: I know one, the others, no clue who or what looney tunes stuff they do to get a hundred million followers... but, here they are..

Khabaene Lane 162 Million followers

Charli D'Amelio 152 Million

Bella Poarch 93.6 Million

Mr. Beast 91 Million (I've heard of him)

Addison Rae 89 Million

You know who doesn't let their own people use TikTok because they know how dumb it makes people?

The ones who built it.

TikTok has a very diverse amount of content. If users are only seeing teenage girls dancing, that's because they want to watch teenage girls dancing. If it's users are getting dumber, it's because they choose to look at dumb content.
If they want scholarly input from all ranges of history or science, it's there. (That's primarily what I access on TikTok.)
It can be thought provoking and informative - and there is a lot of conservative political content.
I heard of a bunch of youth ministers complaining awhile back that it's nothing but teenage girls dancing in revealing outfits. Umm - there's an algorithm. If that's what they're seeing, it's because that's what they want to look at.

quote:

Originally posted by murphman:
I heard of a bunch of youth ministers complaining awhile back that it's nothing but teenage girls dancing in revealing outfits. Umm - there's an algorithm. If that's what they're seeing, it's because that's what they want to look at.

I doubt they are watching it at all. They are mentioning this well-known type of TikTok content, not because they are closet perverts, as you suggest not so subtly, but because the conditioning TikTok is giving impressionable teens and pre-teens is detrimental to their development. It doesn't matter what other content is on that platform. As long as this growth-stunting shit is allowed to affect kids, it's garbage and it needs to be gone.

It is bizarre to hear you and others defend this CCP spy app.

So many people stream on the platform. When you tell them communists own it and run it, well they don’t care. Idiots. I hope they ban it and I will enjoy listening to the whiny bitches cry about it.

There is no doubt it can have corrupting effect on any user, regardless of age, sex, race.

Death scrolling is common for people on the app, you see them, head buried in their anti-social devices, flipping up videos constantly.

While that is a concern, what is the real reason for this law, I doubt for a second that DC is concerned with the CCP controlling the mind of 13 year olds watching Taylor Swift videos.

If the D want to put this into law, and they force TikTok to sell to a US concern, then what are they really planning to do with it and what kind of banning information or "misinformation" as they call it is the underlying reason, heck all politicians.

They probably all want a piece of the IPO offering for the US Company as part of the deal.

I only watch TikTok videos via Facebook. I can't remember how I stumbled upon it, but some of those videos are fascinating and very educational. One regular I love to watch is a guy who delivers airplanes all over the world. Another is a broker for private jets. It's stuff you would never even think of if you don't run in those circles, but it's very interesting stuff. Another huge section of those videos has to do with flipping Rolexes, which I know something about. It's not all mindless dancing and Tide pod eaters.

quote:

the conditioning TikTok is giving impressionable teens and pre-teens is detrimental to their development. It doesn't matter what other content is on that platform. As long as this growth-stunting shit is allowed to affect kids, it's garbage and it needs to be gone.

Exactly. Instagram and the like are shit, and have manipulated teenage girls to the girls' detriment for years; but they don't have the direct Chicom connection.

My understanding is this is not a ban, but a forced sale to an American company. It will likely be back with the same shit but without the deep CCP connection.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
MY FIL is convinced the Biden regime is now going to use this to go after and try and shut down Elon Musk and Twitter. That's why the Democrats suddenly got on board with this, they figured out another way to go after him.

He would have to become a Chinese citizen for this to work on him, methinks.

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
MY FIL is convinced the Biden regime is now going to use this to go after and try and shut down Elon Musk and Twitter. That's why the Democrats suddenly got on board with this, they figured out another way to go after him.

He would have to become a Chinese citizen for this to work on him, methinks.

Why is that. They might start with it being against the Chinese but then make it against any other foreign born.

The government claims they are worried about young people getting their news from TikTok but they are perfectly fine with things like Reddit? Reddit is way worse. Now if they would come out and say they don’t want China to have so much access then that’s a different thing but they are complaining about swaying the youth to vote a certain way. Reddit is like 90% liberal and no one says a peep.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy but that is a stretch. Foreign born? That’s your concern? Besides the office of President please enlighten us on any Constitutional limitations of being a US citizen and foreign born. Let’s save some time, there isn’t any.

Clearly you can push any legislation you want but I’m not even sure this chicom bill passes constitutional muster, just being foreign born definitely doesn’t.

quote:

When Trump suggested this, it was absurd according to the D, now Biden and the D are behind the ban, so the real issue, could it be that being Chinese controlled the Administration can't force them to censor news, but if it's sold to an American Company, the government could gain another huge ally in censoring content.

HRK: I think you are on to it.

Before Elon Musk bought it, Twitter was a government controlled platform. The government didn't have to own it directly to control it through the intel community.

They lost Twitter as a government controlled platform. This could be the replacement.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
MY FIL is convinced the Biden regime is now going to use this to go after and try and shut down Elon Musk and Twitter. That's why the Democrats suddenly got on board with this, they figured out another way to go after him.

He would have to become a Chinese citizen for this to work on him, methinks.

Why is that. They might start with it being against the Chinese but then make it against any other foreign born.

The government claims they are worried about young people getting their news from TikTok but they are perfectly fine with things like Reddit? Reddit is way worse. Now if they would come out and say they don’t want China to have so much access then that’s a different thing but they are complaining about swaying the youth to vote a certain way. Reddit is like 90% liberal and no one says a peep.

He's an US citizen, no matter where he born. Taking it from "foreign citizen" and "controlled by foreign government" to "foreign born US citizen" is too unrealistic of a leap to be discussed with a straight face.

A bit of "Turnabout is Fair play" happening here.

If we wanted to create a quasi governmental App targeting Chinas youth for anything but what the Communist Party wanted their youth to see, we would not be allowed to push it in China.

So let our children henceforth be fed a American owned TicTok that is free of the CCP's devious meddling.

If you want to start a company in China there has to be a Chinese owned stake in the country.

For years, if you buy a an Intel PC sold in China, the government has had a key to your TCP to monitor and censor transmissions.

Lets wind down our factories there and treat them as the hostile party they are.

Lets stop giving student VISAs to their citizens who are famous for sending data back to the motherland.

Lets deport the Chinese males who are showing up and crossing at our border with Mexico.

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:
He's an US citizen, no matter where he born. Taking it from "foreign citizen" and "controlled by foreign government" to "foreign born US citizen" is too unrealistic of a leap to be discussed with a straight face.

After he exposed how involved the FBI was in Twitter content I apparently have way less trust in our own government to play fair than you do.

China blocks virtually all western social media:

Facebook, Instagram, What's App, Google, YouTube, etc. Can't even use Google Search.

They only allow Chinese social media that is monitored and can be censored.

Banning Chinese social media in the U.S. is simply "fair play".