FCC Commissioner Calls To Ban TikTok

[TheBigA]

Senator Hawley calls on the Treasury Secretary to require Tik Tok to sever its connections with China:

GOP senator calls on Yellen to 'ensure' TikTok severs its connections to China

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen after TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas' testimony on Capitol Hill last week.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[kevtronics]

Senator Hawley calls on the Treasury Secretary to require Tik Tok to sever its connections with China:

First, members of congress should sever their own connections with foreign adversaries, including the group of Republican senators who met with senior Russian officials in Moscow on July 4th in 2018:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-senators-tell-contradictory-stories-about-moscow-trip

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

TikTok Seen Moving Toward U.S. Security Deal, but Hurdles Remain

A draft agreement with the Biden administration to keep the Chinese-owned video app operating in the United States is under review. That could mean more wrangling.

www.nytimes.com

Here is more on Tik Tok.

 

[Michi]

People would be a hell of a lot smarter if this app weren’t around anymore.

What? Thanks to TikTok, many teens now know how tasty Tide Pods really are and that chicken tastes great when it's cooked in NyQuil. LOL.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

What? Thanks to TikTok, many teens now know how tasty Tide Pods really are and that chicken tastes great when it's cooked in NyQuil. LOL.

And also we now know that some politicians connected to the Disinformation Dozen are behind some of the trending on Tik Tok Segments.

Just not for the NyQuil on Chicken part for now.

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/08/06/vaccine-misinformation-and-a-look-inside-the-disinformation-dozen

 

[Michi]

Yes.. regardless of which side you are on, I think we can all agree that the MyPillow guy is a billowing turdbiscuit.

 

[KeithE4]

Yes.. regardless of which side you are on, I think we can all agree that the MyPillow guy is a billowing turdbiscuit.

That's a gratuitous slur to the Turdbiscuit-American Community, both billowing and non-billowing.

 

[landtuna]

Yes.. regardless of which side you are on, I think we can all agree that the MyPillow guy is a billowing turdbiscuit.

🤣

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

TikTok Is Full of Videos of People Promoting Ivermectin, the Horse Deworming Medication Falsely Touted as a Covid Cure

The platform's algorithm promotes videos of people drinking cocktails of the drug, which is perhaps best known as a horse and dog deworming treatment

www.yahoo.com

Also it's crazy how Tik Tok was initially accused of spreading questionable content over Ivermectin until it revealed that politicians and Pundits were doing that for political gain and some of it came from Fox News once the investigation fact checked those claims about trending on Tik Tok.

 

[TheBigA]

Also it's crazy how Tik Tok was initially accused of spreading questionable content over Ivermectin until it revealed that politicians and Pundits were doing that for political gain and some of it came from Fox News once the investigation fact checked those claims about trending on Tik Tok.

TikTok guidelines only prohibit misinformation if it causes harm. Ivermectin doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt either.

Community Guidelines

www.tiktok.com

So while conservatives are free to talk about fake cures, they don't like TikTok because it's owned by a company in China. Of course their phone, computer, and TV were all made in China. But that's OK.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Independent Lens | TikTok, Boom. | Season 24 | Episode 2 | PBS

Gen Z influencers and experts help dissect influential social media platform TikTok.

www.pbs.org

Here is a doc on Tik Tok Released.

 

[davideduardo]

First, members of congress should sever their own connections with foreign adversaries, including the group of Republican senators who met with senior Russian officials in Moscow on July 4th in 2018:

Members of Congress meet with "foreign officials" constantly and with great expense to our government in what is broadly labeled as "fact finding missions" but which are often plain old junkets.

A common one is "to evaluate the status of Puerto Rico". there, the local press would frequently run stories on how what Democrats reported when back in DC was very different from what Republicans saw on the same tour.

My favorite, though, was when a House group visited Ecuador when the first oil pipeline was being opened across the Andes. A group of us in the news media who met after any local event got international coverage (mostly as an excuse to have ceviche and beer) found that the two parties could have been telling stories about two different countries! The facts were not wrong, it was just that the perspective and focus were totally different.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Interview: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

It's the strongest language Carr has used to-date to urge action on TikTok.

www.axios.com

Umm how will that be enforced in practice. Also what disinformation issue has to be big enough to get people out of Tik Tok? Does it have to be as big as the Cambridge Analytica Scandal Meta Inc was accused of being in. Does it have to be conspiracy theories on Twitter? Alex Jones rantings on Youtube to get people to really boycott Tik Tok? Privacy issues everywhere?

State of play: TikTok is currently in negotiations with CFIUS, an interagency committee that conducts national security reviews of foreign companies' deals, to determine whether it can be divested by Chinese parent company ByteDance to an American company and remain operational in the United States.

• The New York Times reported in September that a deal was taking shape but not yet in its final form and that Department of Justice official Lisa Monaco was concerned the deal did not provide sufficient insulation from Beijing.
• A Republican-controlled Congress could try to scrap any deal viewed as too easy on China.

What he's saying: "I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," Carr said, citing recent revelations about how TikTok and ByteDance handle U.S. user data.

• Carr highlighted concerns about U.S. data flowing back to China and the risk of a state actor using TikTok to covertly influence political processes in the United States.
• There simply isn't "a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party]," Carr said.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Tik Tok, Twitter and Meta have all been accused for their failures in handling of election conspiracy theories not just in the USA but in Kenya, Philippines, and Brazil. Yes its a systemic issue for now on the platforms but then again how all platforms make reforms is yet to be seen again.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/bytedance-tiktok-privacy-china/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/tiktok-popularity/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/tiktok-viral-fame-harassment/

Tik Tok's rise to fame as one of the most used app.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

TikTok banned from government-issued devices in Texas

The directive from Gov. Greg Abbott comes the same day the state of Indiana filed a lawsuit against the app.

www.kut.org

Maryland becomes latest state to ban TikTok use in government

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has announced a ban on the use of TikTok and certain China and Russia-based platforms in the state's executive branch of government.

www.pbs.org

Indiana AG Sues TikTok Twice as Texas Joins the Call to Ban App From State-Issued Devices

TikTok is facing growing scrutiny from various U.S. political officials. Amidst an ongoing call from state leaders to ban the app from state government devices, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has announced that the state has filed two lawsuits against the social media platform.

news.yahoo.com

Note these bans only affect State owned devices.

 

[TheBigA]

GOP senators have come up with legislation to ban Tik Tok:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/tech/tiktok-ban-bill/index.html

The new bill by Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a bipartisan pair of congressmen in the House, reflects the latest escalation by US policymakers against the Chinese-owned short-form video app. TikTok has faced doubts about its ability to safeguard US user data from the Chinese government.

Aren't these the same people who claimed Twitter was censoring free speech?

They need to read the first amendment again. The first words are "Congress shall make no law." There are no exceptions.

 

[gr8oldies]

First, members of congress should sever their own connections with foreign adversaries, including the group of Republican senators who met with senior Russian officials in Moscow on July 4th in 2018:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-senators-tell-contradictory-stories-about-moscow-trip

.

I really, really want to know what's up with that. Probably never will.

 

[TheBigA]

It appears that a TikTok ban for government-owned devices will pass the congress:

Pelosi pushes to include TikTok ban in $1.7 trillion spending bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to see the yearlong spending bill include legislation banning social media giant TikTok from federal government devices

news.yahoo.com

The issue is moving in Congress after major security concerns were raised by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers and Biden administration officials. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned this month that Chinese officials have broad access to TikTok, which allows them "to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations."

However, Tik Tok will still be available for public consumer devices.

 

[davideduardo]

I really, really want to know what's up with that. Probably never will.

Senators and members of the House frequently do "fact finding" trips to visit both allies and adversaries. That has been the custom for longer than I have been alive.

I consider a lot of those trips to be junkets... free vacations paid for by taxpayers... but many are crucial to the needed understanding of world affairs by specific committee members dealing with trade, treaties, cultural exchanges, immigratioi and other areas.

When I lived and owned stations in Ecuador huge petroleum deposits had been discovered there. Quite a few legislators from the US visited to "understand" how that would effect world oil supplies and prices. Few of those legislators actually visited the oil fields in the jungle or the pipeline through the Andes. But they "did" all the fine restaurants and clubs in Quito for sure! Several asked to meet with me as an ex-pat in media, but I always refused as that would have caused me huge local damage to reputation and revenue.