Board will include one U.S. government–appointed director.
Why?
The nominal reason for all this is that we didn't want a Chinese company controlling an important social media outlet. I don't love that reasoning, but fine, whatever.
So they're forcibly selling it to an American company. Which should solve the problem, right?
Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies? Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?
Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?
Seems obvious to me that this is so the government can force the platform to silence users who are critical of the government.
You're right, it seems obvious. Considering the number of self-professed "free speech absolutists" I have encountered on this site over the years, I'm surprised at how much benefit of the doubt others are giving this.
I'm not. The last few years have made it very clear what the actual political goals of the VC-tech world are. I was as disappointed as anybody, but I'm not surprised anymore.
I was trying to be more neutral, but after some thought, this isn't the time for that. My "surprise" was more than a bit sarcastic. Between this and the FCC going after Kimmel, now is the last chance I will give for anyone claiming to care about free speech to prove they weren't lying. There's no plausible deniability anymore, free speech is unambiguously under attack.
What’s even more hilarious are all the anti cancel culture warriors from the past few years going on about how the Kimmel situation isn’t cancel culture.
Especially since this is probably the only incident in the last couple of decades where the cancelation was a result of the government threatening consequences unless a specific individual was not canceled.
Cancel culture has been firmly adopted by all political sides now. It is simply too powerful and effective a weapon to be not used.
It is a pretty big difference when the left wing cancel culture is a grassroots efforts of the populace trying to enforce moral behavior versus the right wing cancel culture we are seeing today in which the government is the one exerting pressure and not the populace.
Yup. It always comes back to "both sides are bad, so vote Republican".
Dril said it best.
https://x.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en
I'm glad you finally agree free speech under attack. Now that the president/party in power has changed, it seems the comments have shifted from being that "I must be left wing" to "I must be right wing".
Is there anything that will make you interested in free speech itself, or is it just an attack towards those you disagree with? People don't want to waste time in an internet debate with someone who starts off with an assumption of the latter, and you've already concluded you were being sarcastic in asking. The lack of interest in responding to you about it will only help drive your belief "the other people" are the only ones who claim to care about free speech.
That is because the complaints about left wing threats to free speech are always incredibly dubious like the government asking social media sites to take down what was widely considered dangerous Covid misinformation or some random college professor saying people should use "Latinx". In comparison, the right wing attacks on free speech are like the FCC threatening people for mild jokes. Can you name anything the left wing has done that approaches what we just saw with Kimmel?
The Biden administration started this whole TikTok thing in the first place, you just liked the platform at the time and are now getting bit in the ass when the group in power has changed. I'm not interested in which side is supposed to be worse than the other so someone can feel better about the speech they are okay with suppressing, I'm interested in free speech all the time.
The Kimmel thing is indeed a stupid and dangerous attack on free speech, but you can't just wait until the speech under attack is about something you care for to declare that. It's already too late at that point, which is what many of the people you eagerly dismiss as just caring about right wing politics were trying to say.
> Biden started this whole TikTok thing in the first place
No, Trump started it in his first term, Biden just continued it, as did Trump continue what he started.
I stand corrected on the claim I made, merging https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292731
> The Biden administration started this whole TikTok thing in the first place
No, it didn't.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...
I stand corrected on the claim I made, merging https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45292731
Others have addressed "this whole TikTok thing" being attributed to Biden. I asked you for a left wing equivalent for Kimmel and you couldn't name one. Somehow this lack of an equivalent left wing attack is evidence of them sharing responsibility for this right wing attack on free speech. That is a perfect illustration of my point. I'm not going to "waste time in an internet debate with someone" who can't see the silliness of the argument you just made.
Fair on "starting", I should have said "was perfectly in support of and did not attempt to stop" https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-administration-leave-t... and I'm willing to see it was silly to forget the specifics by claiming a different sequence to the topic - hopefully you are also willing to make the same kinds of considerations instead of only using such questions as assumptions of other people.
There is no lack of "equivalent left wing attack", just shifts on when it's okay to do based on how much the individual agrees with it. I've had this exact conversation with right wing folks but the other way around (where nothing conservative was unreasonable suppression but plenty left wing was unreasonable suppression). Because you agree with the views of whatever the Biden admin supported e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_Governance_Boar... then you don't consider it a problem (and yes, the Biden administration likes to claim it was just building on something the Trump administration had started... which gets us nowhere in actually doing something positive for free speech instead of using it as a blame game). Because someone else agrees with Trump/Kirk they don't consider it a problem. As a result, there is nothing I can say that will make anyone agree when things are equivalent. The difference is not that I agree with a different agenda, nor do I need to find equivalence, it's that I'm not interested in weighing the speech itself.
I, obviously, don't like Russian misinformation (or human smugglers or whatever thing is obviously malintended), but I don't think trying to have a government body decide what is misinformation is a good way to solve the concerns. That's what a free speech absolutist is after all, not just a way to say only a certain party did something bad. I could go on and on about specific instances, but all that does is rile people up about "why would you put that in a list of bad things" or "that's obviously not as big a deal to worry about" whenever they see something they tend to agree with. Those not in support of free speech have no problem saying other transgressions on free speech are a bigger deal, just in agreeing what "other" is.
Supporting free speech is not about agreeing with the speech, it's about tackling any perceived bad speech with open means instead of power. I don't agree with either the Biden or Trump administrations on the ways either seek to suppress social media, regardless if you think some are justified and others aren't. You think it's okay to suppress things as long as they seem harmless or small to you, I don't. That's the only fair assumption of what a free speech absolutist is.
I will give credit that at least my original comment isn't already flagged dead for saying I'm really about free speech instead of the opposition, which has been the typical result the previous 4 years.
In addition to what people already said, Biden isn't left-wing.
I'd tend to agree (I voted Jill Stein) but in context of U.S. politics he's usually considered as such (at least as center left, not center right or even center), albeit less so than some other figures.
On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being left and 10 being right, Biden's about a 6, and Trump is like 10.
I'd also agree Trump is more conservative than Biden is liberal, but I think we're getting a bit into the weeds here...
The point with Biden and Trump is whenever free speech is mentioned, people conclude the part of a political spectrum they identify with is being attacked by someone they perceive as being on a different part, with no belief there could ever be a person actually worried about free speech itself. It's not at all about whether I agree or disagree with where they perceive that threat to be from on the spectrum, it's just what such people like to claim. I've yet to see a normal political spectrum where 100% of folks agree with free speech absolutism, even when inconvenient.
To folks who actually care about free speech instead of partisan politics, the idea of debating where on a scale of 1 to 10 the source of the threat might be from is in itself absurdly irrelevant. To folks that don't care about free speech, it's convenient to perceive free speech claims as only ever having a hidden partisan agenda instead of allowing the possibility of a free speech absolutist. The only exception I can think to any of this is a political spectrum where one side is "free speech absolutism" itself.
The thing is, self-professed "free speech absolutists" generally believe that only right with and nazi speech are the ones worthy of defense. Anybody else who is criticizing those, disagreeing with those or promoting other ideas is seen as threat to free speech.
Self-professed "free speech absolutists" get really angry when left or anti right people speak or make the right uncomfortable.
No, this is just in your head. You might still have 40-year-old instincts from when the authoritarian right was in charge, both in institutions and in social norms, but it's been the authoritarian left for 20 years. Any discussion that engages in spreading stereotypes, rather than debating ideas, is just part of the problem.
It is authoritarian right right now destroying democracy in full speed.
And it was like that all along, just a bit more hidden so that moderate right can pretend it is not happening all along.
"Authoritarian left" We're cooked
Historically this is definitely what's killed the most people, but who knows - maybe this time it'll be different.
What sources of information are you getting that you think the people in charge now are not 'authoritarian right' ?
You're not making sense. People on the right actively spread stereotypes, racist cliches, and other antisocial, pro-violent opinions that they call the truth and won't budge on their opinion, but as soon as a leftist calls someone with actual authoritarian viewpoints a nazi they are the problem for spreading stereotypes and not debating ideas? lmfao
> but as soon as a leftist calls someone with actual authoritarian viewpoints a nazi
The left en masse has been doing this for 10 years, and for far less that "authoritarian viewpoints".
Not surprised this is your only argument to my post. It was an easy, yet flawed example on my part.
People say all sorts of stuff, but if your consistently being told by a large cohort of individuals your shit stinks for a decade, it probably stinks.
Particularly the Israeli government.
Honestly curious how much of this is about stopping people from knowing what Israel (and the US by extension) are doing.
Just in time for them to “finish the job”
EDIT: Found this: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/tiktok-ban-fueled-by-israe...
That, and boosting the influencers they want to be heard.
>Is there something so overwhelmingly devious about the TikTok format in particular that the government has to supervise it?
Well, yes, for starters. I think there's a pretty strong consensus from people on all sides that there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
It's the beneficiary of powerful network effects, it created those effects for itself with a superior app, but nevertheless it is a distinguishing feature. I also would say it's culturally positioned perhaps the best of any major social media app over the present and near term.
And in its current ownership it's required by statute to comply with Chinese national security data requests. And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
>> Are we going to be putting [US] government-appointed directors on all [US] social media companies?
> And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
Agreed.
Great so let’s ban it then and avoid that problem? If you’re upset about the US government having a board seat on the US-specific app then you are even more mad that the CCP does while you munch on Tide pods and get outraged about whatever the algorithm tells you.
Or you can just get rid of this crap and stop lying to yourself about the value and they can rule over an empty kingdom.
Otherwise yes indeed the US will get a board seat and the Trump admin will make content demands and you will take it like a coward because you’re too addicted to give it up.
(Just a note I don’t mean you specifically - I don’t know if you’re addicted to social media or not)
> there's no more addictive algorithm than the TikTok one.
I really have to disagree at this point. Meta has all the money in the world to throw at this, and inference isn't rocket surgery. I think Meta's algorithm caught up a couple years ago, if anything it's even more addictive. Tiktok is simply riding on first mover status, plus it's a Coke/Pepsi thing, a large segment finds Meta properties distasteful for all the obvious reasons.
I agree (not OP). The difference in addictiveness between the three big boys (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) grows smaller with every passing year as their back-catalog of content grows.
Pretty much everyone I know consumes TikTok style content these days. I personally have blocked myself from this stuff via deleting the Insta, YouTube and I even wrote a TamperMonkey script to block myself from getting trapped down the rabbit hole.
Self shout out: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/534969-begone-youtube-shor...
I think it's more the product design is far more distilled for popular (and addictive) short term content. From ad placement to UI to the format of solely being a frictionless video platform with mostly anonymous users.
> And you used to not have to say this, but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
At the rate the US is going this will be interesting for Europe and Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, in probably the near future.
I think its pretty obvious how and why, every other platform copied the key parts of Tik tok, youtube has shorts, and others have their own rendition. What they all miss is that this IS Tik Tok its not some additional part of Tik Tok. It's a simple UI that gives you endless content you like, they tag all the content in a meaningful way behind the scenes, and then the recommendation engine works to feed you more of what you like.
Pinterest but for short videos.
Turns out short attention bursts is enough for the younger generations, they get condensed news. The big downside I see is they get used to the cut version of things, I am a huge fan of longer videos with raw uncut context, I tire of people telling me what someone said, just give me the video thanks, I can think for myself.
> but a culturally dominant app being leveraged by an authoritarian state goes in the not good colunm.
I think political scholars will debate on what the net effect of this is actually going to be. As in, are we better off with the GOP or the CCP controlling the algorithm? Certainly, the CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not, like trying to confuse us as to how we should feel about protecting Taiwan.
But in the past, the CCP has been interested in sewing discontent in the US and the method by which they have done that is by propping up the GOP. And many ways by which both the CCP and GOP would presumably manipulate the algorithm would be similar—owning libs, promoting radical right wing views, etc. But having the GOP control TikTok is a different thing entirely, they are much more incentivized to propagate their own flavor of politics to skew the nations narrative to their liking, in a much more controlled way than I think the CCP would. See twitter for prior art here.
At least if TikTok is owned in the US there might be some oversight into what’s going on. As bankrupt as Mark is as a person it doesn’t seem like hes pushing his own political views into instagrams algorithm, unlike the case at twitter. I think we have yet to see how Ellison will treat the great power of controlling the TikTok algorithm but I’m cynical.
> CCP has anti west incentives that the GOP does not
The GOP wants to destroy the west even more than the CCP, yes.
Having control of "The Algorithm" is putting it vaguely. The two things are making sure everyone sees a certain video, like how China did with the factory videos taking down luxury brands. The other is filtering out things entirely, eg Epstein or Luigi Mangione. The worst is that they'll learn from the CCP, which is to let people air their frustrations, just don't let them get organized.
It's an interesting question, but the information we have so far doesn't seem to be enough to give a meaningful answer yet. E.g. is it something like "one person appointed to oversee the full terms of the transition are kept" or "one person appointed always to make sure TikTok aligns with the government".
I'm not necessarily a fan of either... but to vastly different levels.
Because Trump wants a proxy so he can continue to influence the direction TikTok takes. He wants easier access to data so he can go after his political opponents, as well as get things censored he doesn't like. Of course, this would all be possible without someone on the board, but it can't hurt, and likely will help.
If TikTok removes something, would the fact that there’s a government representative on the board give standing for a first amendment claim? Normally private companies aren’t required to furnish you with first amendment rights, but if one could argue that, if not for the board representative, they might not have prevented that speech, then perhaps you would have standing.
Yeah, the supreme court will get right on that
As soon as the appointee is appointed by a Democratic politician, at least.
That won't help. The count is currently 6 Republicans to 3 Democrats. The party isn't an absolute predictor of how they'll vote, but it's pretty close.
It would take a minimum of two Republicans to retire, and be replaced by Democrats, to change the partisan balance. The oldest justice is Clarence Thomas, but the next two are both Democrats. Everybody else is under 70 and will not retire for a minimum of a decade.
I'm talking about the appointee to the board of the US-TikTok; I doubt the Supreme Court will have any objection until it is favorable for their partisan politics. (I hope I am wrong, but the past years have made me quite cynical)
When has this government give a single care about free speech or the constitution or even the law in general?
Pushing trad wife and Christ is king content to young people is worth it. Propaganda works.
They don’t want you scrolling through insert_controversial_topic at break neck pace. The bandwidth on TikTok in terms of getting a visual out is extremely wide and fast.
You know the answer lol
That is a seat reserved for AIPAC.
Remember though, it's only bad when the other guy does it. We don't want Chinese government involvement in TikTok, but we do want US government involvement. /s
The "Be all you can be" slogan requires more than just a great firewall that China should pay for, it needs a constant vigil to protect it from German nihilists.
Build a [fire]wall and make China pay for it is an amusing — if bleak — joke. Thank you :)
What do you mean though by protection from “German nihilists”? Is that a satirical name you imagine the US government might use for the EU?
The timing of the slogan change is not really ideal for blaming German nihilists but it's all a while ago around when the big Lebowski surfaced that very serious threat..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWIII_(album)
Perhaps a sideways reference to old movies? “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.”[0]
Or maybe just a direct reference to Strauss, I dunno.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464759&r...
I mean I do want the world's most influential social media app to be within the jurisdiction of a non-authoritarian state, yes.
So... we're transferring it to one who requires a government representative on its board?
Harm reduction accomplished! Sounds like we agree on the underlying principle.
"non-authoritarian" state said completely unironically.
It's the difference between a house that's on fire, and a house that's been fully burned to the ground and replaced with a maximum security prison. If you can't distinguish between those, I don't think your grasp on objective reality is strong enough for you to be qualified to participate in the conversation.
So then you agree that putting our current government even partially in charge of the new company would be a bad idea?
I agree that it is harm reduction relative to the status quo.
i want the worlds most influential social media app to be away from the jurisdiction of any powerful people/organization, whether that’s governments, religions, billionaires, etc…
i find it worrisome that some are implying it’s new controllers are somehow less of a threat.
The USA is also an authoritarian State, it just has better marketing.
I live in Taiwan. I'm no fan of the CPC. But if you zoom out a bit, it's kinda hard to distinguish the two beyond Americans winning global cultural victory (CPC propaganda is still goofy and obvious).
Point at tiananmem square, an atrocious massacre of their own citizenry. The USA has done this - it has locked its citizens in concentration camps, supported their enslavement and recaptured the ones that managed to free themselves, bombed wealthy neighborhoods of the wrong race, had soldiers fire upon striking workers and peaceful protesters. America just has no Tank Man photo and much more subtle media relations - ostensibly free media but in reality controlled through the mutual interests of the billionaire owners of the media conglomerates and the multi millionaire politicians.
The CPC did a genocide in Xinjiang. They were very good at information control here, it's almost impossible to find even an image from the inside of one of their concentration camps. The USA funded a genocide in Palestine, but it can maintain a sort of non culpability. At any point in time the USA can turn on its Israeli allies, and my cynical expectation is that when the government becomes flagrantly fascist enough they'll just blame the Jews and call it done. But, until now, they've maintained an extraordinarily effective marketing campaign propping up Israel as a bastion of freedom and democracy in a demonic environment,values it's managed to market across the entire world that isn't the PRC or cuba or Venezuela, to where people in other countries will say "I can do what I want, it's a free country" even in countries where that really isn't the case e.g. for speech in the UK for example. In actuality it's a more racialized pitch - the Israelis are more credibly white, the Muslims are, well, Muslims. Or Brown. Whichever. But they have this massive marketing apparatus (decades of film and TV) smoothing over these racialized concepts into "freedom and democracy vs savagery and chaos," whereas the CPC with their racialized version just had Han and Normal vs Muslim and Kinda Weird (maybe dangerous!). A much more despicable pitch on the surface which is why they didn't get away with a televised genocide the way America and Israel got away with decades of apartheid against Palestine.
Anyway in summary if we take a look at all the bad the CPC vs the USA have done in their lifetimes, idk man at best the scales at balanced, worse case I think America has been worse for the world overall. I would be curious if people that disagree would be willing to do so with the context of American imperialism in mind - interfering in south America and the middle East for example. Is it still better than a country that has one imperialist action (Tibet) and a genocide under its belt?
I'll start by recommending you look up whataboutism, and learn about why it's a fallacious form of argumentation. There's definitely a non-fallacious way of making your argument, but that's your job.
I also don't think your assessment of the relative histories is reliable, but for our purposes here, that's all largely beside the point, because the degree of national security alignment of domestic companies in China compared to the United States are at completely different orders of magnitude, which is the pertinent issue when considering harm reduction here.
When did the concept of "a free country" arise, and what did it mean? It seems to have been in use in the 1600s. Here it is in a tract written, apparently, around 1689 in England:
https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-tract-su...
The freedoms in that instance are freedom of religion, and democracy. (Democracy, the franchise, was limited to about 10% of men, under rules that varied locally from "you have to own a house" to "you have to own the entire region".)
But here the concept is again in ancient times:
https://archive.org/details/BiblicalCollectionPrintedBetween...
This is (a translation of) Josephus, writing in the first century about a speech by a Roman senator from the time when Claudius was put on the throne, with lines like "our natural freedom", "breath of liberty", and "the Liberty of former Times, that was dead and gone before ever I came into the World ..." I can't work out what that freedom was all about - Claudius came after Caligula, though, so you can make a good guess - but evidently this kind of concept is much older than the United States.
I also found the phrase "it's a free country" in Uncle Tom's Cabin, where the freedom in question is the freedom to control slaves.
So the concept is:
• Not modern,
• Not well defined,
• But not meaningless, either.
My meaning is more like, St. Nicholas and his flying sleigh and reindeer have existed since at least the 1800s, Father Christmas as well, Sinterklaas even earlier most likely, but Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus as the world knows him in 1930s, and the USA did the same for the modern concept of "free country" or "democracy." A couple decades of radio, television, and film dominance was the method.
Running with that metaphor, Sinterklaas (freedom and democracy) actually exists, and even when people invoke the Coca-Cola version they're still aspiring to something with a grain of truth to it. It doesn't merely simplify to "us and them" but also contains some actual meaning relating to actual forms of freedom, when people take the trouble to add the depth back in instead of lazily designating outsiders.
I guess the US have a kind of Tank Man photo. The girl from Vietnam.
About media. For me, since Trump second term, I just can't watch Superhero movies (DC / Marvel). It just feels strange and wrong for me. Also movies like the Den of Thieves (1), the feel just plain wrong with a brutal police.
This is your annual reminder that white Muslims do in fact exist.
This is a gentle reminder that it really doesn't matter what the color of a Muslim's skin is to those who care to distinguish someone as Muslim or not-Muslim. To the racist right wing machine, those that are undeniably white (say, a blond haired blue eyed nord), will be called "Muslim" or "Jew" or "Antifa" or "queer" or "trans" and that'll be that, their whiteness is revoked.
Whiteness, like any race, is a purely cultural concept rooted in the shifting reality of day to day sociology.
A man with as-of-yet undefined politics was identified as the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. Before he was found, a governor said, "I really hope he's not one of us." When it was discovered that he was a young white male from a Mormon MAGA family, the media machine that had been calling for the elimination of the opposition party in the USA (or various minorities such as LGBT people) went silent for about a day until it was discovered that perhaps the assassin's roommate may have been trans. Immediately he was othered. Calls for prayer for a lost young man turned again into calls for violence against trans people. I imagine Governor Cox breathing a sigh of relief. Whiteness revoked!
> Are we going to be putting government-appointed directors on all social media companies?
That wouldn't be a bad thing. How good has unchecked Zuckerberg been for us, really?
> Or just the one that used-to-be-Chinese?
Or the one where there's some level to force on them, like here. If Zuckerberg starts needing government cash to keep Facebook going, I'd expect a similar deal.
>That wouldn't be a bad thing
The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together.
Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
> Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
No, not for the good of both - for the good of the people. It is demonstrably beneficial for those in power in government and megacorps to conspire and consolidate that power, it enables them to further control and extract from the populace. It is the people that should be invested in keeping them separate.
> The government should be the government, and corporations should be corporations. Nothing good will come of having them bleed together.
> Like church and state, you keep them separate for the good of both.
I'm not convinced of that anymore. The problem is the government is so weak and slow: the corporations can implement some bad decision before the government has a chance to notice and regulate.
There needs to be more stakeholders with power at the corporate decision-making table than just the shareholders and their representatives. You need workers there, you needs someone to speak for the interests of the country as a whole, etc.
Unchecked Zuckerberg is still preferable to anyone appointed by the current admin.