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United States

Biden Signs TikTok 'Divest or Ban' Bill Into Law (theverge.com) 122

President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year. The Verge: The divest-or-ban bill is now law, starting the clock for ByteDance to make its move. The company has an initial nine months to sort out a deal, though the president could extend that another three months if he sees progress. While just recently the legislation seemed like it would stall out in the Senate after being passed as a standalone bill in the House, political maneuvering helped usher it through to Biden's desk. The House packaged the TikTok bill -- which upped the timeline for divestment from the six months allowed in the earlier version -- with foreign aid to US allies, which effectively forced the Senate to consider the measures together. The longer divestment period also seemed to get some lawmakers who were on the fence on board.

Biden Signs TikTok 'Divest or Ban' Bill Into Law

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  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:18AM (#64421104) Journal

    Courts may rule evidence is needed before "punishing" Tik Tok, otherwise could be considered unequal treatment.

    • by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:34AM (#64421152) Homepage Journal

      Courts may rule evidence is needed before "punishing" Tik Tok, otherwise could be considered unequal treatment.

      I believe the "National Security" ban hammer still holds a lot of sway in instances like this.

      TT is held closely by an enemy/antagonistic foreign country...giving them the ability to sway discourse and public sentiment via their algorithms.

      This is a bit of new ground granted....

      But, the US constitution protects the US and it's people, not hostile foreign countries.....right?

      • That's a great point, US constitution is meant to protect and apply to US citizens. The platform gives foreign influence leverage to spread disinformation under the same protections as a US citizen. This distinction is likely to be overlooked by those benefitting from the platform.
        • It looks more like government approved theft in order to let some US company get all the income from the platform instead of those pesky orientals. Probably Biden got his kickback too.
        • by flink ( 18449 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @01:01PM (#64421468)

          That's simply not true. It's full of language like "no person shall be..." and "the government shall not...". No mention of citizens. When the constitution is talking about citizens only it very specifically calls it out.

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          No, the only mention in the Constitution of "citizens" is in reference to the qualifications to hold certain offices. It applies to everyone here, citizen or not.

      • This is just some MISO (Military Information Support Operations) bull crap. Why do we always have to be at war with everyone else? Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Ecuadorians, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Afghans, Russians, Argentinian, Iraqi, Iranians, British, French, Spanish, Gays, Lesbians, Trans, Blacks, Germans, Iroquois, Chinese, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Dominicans, the freaking Mormons. Damn bull crap. This country is run by war mongering pricks
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The risk is that if the US behaves that way, it gives other countries licence to do so as well. iPhone sales are down 19% in China, and the government hasn't even banned Apple for consumers, just government use.

        It will be interpreted as naked protectionism and responded to in kind.

      • But, the US constitution protects the US and it's people, not hostile foreign countries.....right?

        That is a dangerously myopic view.

        The US Constitution espouses certain principles and it also places obligations on whatever government is in charge of the USA on its behavior. This does indeed protect citizens, but that is not its sole purpose. It is largely a document that spends most of its time enumerating the various restrictions that government must operate under.

        When those restrictions are violated, we are all in danger, both citizens and non-citizens. I suspect this law would not pass Constitutional

    • by Torodung ( 31985 )

      Injunction in 3... 2...

  • by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:22AM (#64421116)
    In general, I'm skeptical of legislative statutes that name individuals or companies. Even the fig leaf of generalizing it to "social media companies with foreign ownership grossing over umpteen jillion dollars per year" provides some value, in my view. Because otherwise your law books end up referencing a bunch of transient cultural phenomena like, say, the Charleston, and thus looking like they were written not by serious statespeople but by crazy demagogues bent on scoring points in a culture war to the expense of good policy. Ahem.
    • by KiltedKnight ( 171132 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:32AM (#64421146) Homepage Journal
      I am more skeptical of legislation that specifies conditions that political appointees can interpret differently such that they can force the shutdown of any sites they don't like. I really don't care which side of the aisle you are on... the point of free speech is that you are able to speak your thoughts and put your ideas out there for others to debate (an art we seem to have lost), giving people the ability to prove or disprove what you said.
      • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @12:06PM (#64421246)

        Correct, tiktok per se isn't the problem, it's that the USA doesn't control it for its own propaganda/surveillance purposes.

        I agree with this but we have to remember this definition is a philosophical one, not a legal one as it exists in the US legal framework. US Constitutional free speech merely limits what the government can do to restrict speech which is very well defined over centuries of case law (and by world standards the US still has very liberal free speech).

        In this case of social media the debate is around the fact that while you have the ability to speak freely the medium you put that speech onto can restrict it, that is their freedom of speech to control their content.

        • by KiltedKnight ( 171132 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @12:45PM (#64421400) Homepage Journal

          In this case of social media the debate is around the fact that while you have the ability to speak freely the medium you put that speech onto can restrict it, that is their freedom of speech to control their content.

          Yes, the social media companies can curtail things... the problem with this is that they want to censor things AND claim the protections of being a "platform" instead of a "publisher." Once you start removing legitimate arguments of a position in order to suppress real concerns or even just personal opinions, you are now acting as a "publisher." As long as any discussions remain civil, you should be able to continue it, regardless of position espoused. Censor the use of certain words... sure. Outside of any kind of academic discussion on the origin and use of certain words or the presence of them in some well known literary works, there is no reason to be using those epithets. I once received a FB warning because I used the old military joke reply with a friend regarding the disclosure of classified information... the one that starts with, "If I told you, I'd have to...." I even :)-enabled it for the humor impaired. They said it was promoting violence, yet to me all it did was expose how any kind of automated detection system does not know how to recognize a joke.

          • Sure. Now write a law than discriminates between "legitimate arguments of a position in order to suppress real concerns" and those that do not without any false positives.

            Write a law that defines what being "civil" is without false positives or negatives or making it completely subjective.

            there is no reason to be using those epithets

            Sure, but which ones? Old ones from the 16th century? New ones the kids just came up with? What If I am using in a historical analysis prerspective?

            You see how this is tricky?

            I think once you have the government defining

          • Yes, the social media companies can curtail things... the problem with this is that they want to censor things AND claim the protections of being a "platform" instead of a "publisher.

            Umm... why? Toxic users make advertisers leave. You're really going to dictate that social media sites MUST host people who incite violence because they're suddenly not allowed to have a bouncer at the door? Would you propose the gov't reimburse the lost revenue?

          • .. the problem with this is that they want to censor things AND claim the protections of being a "platform" instead of a "publisher."

            It doesn't matter! [eff.org]

        • I agree with this but we have to remember this definition is a philosophical one, not a legal one as it exists in the US legal framework. US Constitutional free speech merely limits what the government can do to restrict speech which is very well defined over centuries of case law (and by world standards the US still has very liberal free speech).

          The government has a role not only in refraining from infringing free speech rights but in protecting the free speech interests of its citizens. See for example Marsh v. AL.

          • Marsh is sorta specific though as it is in the context of a "company town"

            Pretty sure outside that that if Marsh was placing religious texts inside say, a private store, the store owner is well within rights to remove it.

            • Marsh is sorta specific though as it is in the context of a "company town"

              I don't see the relevant distinction between a virtual town created by a corporation and a company town.

              Pretty sure outside that that if Marsh was placing religious texts inside say, a private store, the store owner is well within rights to remove it.

              The crazy thing is if you go to for example YouTube's website.
              "Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world." sounds like a town to me.

              • The Marsh case if I understand it correctly did in fact make that distinction, since in this case the "public streets" were "owned" by the company is where the case hinged on. The court decided since in this case the streets were considered public spaced even if a company in fact had private control over them. It was a unique distinction in the particulars.

                I believe the judges in the ruling in fact made that distinction, so I can't go into my local pet store and place pamphlets for my religion on the sto

                • The Marsh case if I understand it correctly did in fact make that distinction

                  What relevant characteristics of a "virtual town" do you believe make it different from a "company town"? In both cases these spaces are held open to the public. In the case of the virtual town public discourse is its express purpose.

                  , since in this case the "public streets" were "owned" by the company is where the case hinged on. The court decided since in this case the streets were considered public spaced even if a company in fact had private control over them. It was a unique distinction in the particulars.

                  I believe the judges in the ruling in fact made that distinction, so I can't go into my local pet store and place pamphlets for my religion on the store shelves and then claim freedom of speech when the store owner takes them down and asks me to leave. If you can show me precedent on that from another case, be happy to look it over.

                  The "platforms" clearly act as town squares.

                  That why we don't base Con Law on corporate slogans. YouTube has a TOS, me posting video there means I am the behest of those terms.

                  The real world fact of the town square open to the public impacts balancing of competing interests. One can't simply declare their little public virtual town square is in fact something else when it isn't and therefore assert no c

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          That's a distraction from the real issue here, which is that both political parties in the US don't like the kinds of things that are being said on TikTok, and really hate that the TikTok algorithm is promoting those videos.

          There is a lot of stuff about Palestine, and about unions and worker's rights, and about the rental market. A lot of it skews socialist, fairly common European stuff but terrifying to American politicians.

          They want an American company to buy TikTok and change it to promote conservative v

    • In general, I'm skeptical of legislative statutes that name individuals or companies. Even the fig leaf of generalizing it to "social media companies with foreign ownership grossing over umpteen jillion dollars per year" provides some value, in my view.

      I agree, if anything they should have merely provided the authority and worked it like OFAC. I wouldn't even care if they called it the TikTok act so long as they didn't single out a single company in the text of the bill that subjected it to unique criteria different from what any other company that could possibly be subject to the same legislation would be judged by.

      This to me clearly isn't equal protection and while people can argue it's a foreign company it has local infrastructure, offices in numerous

    • by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @02:23PM (#64421834) Homepage Journal

      In general, I'm skeptical of legislative statutes that name individuals or companies. Even the fig leaf of generalizing it to "social media companies with foreign ownership grossing over umpteen jillion dollars per year" provides some value, in my view.

      They have to phrase it that way. By naming an individual or company, it becomes a bill of attainder, at which point it becomes unconstitutional on its face (see Article I, Section 9). Of course, Congress, the Presidency (both parties), and SCOTUS seem to think that the Constitution is a piece of toilet paper these days...

      • Thanks for this. I had the phrase in my brain-attic, but until now I didn't know what a bill of attainder actually was. I also didn't know that this sort of thing was exPLICITly forbidden by the Constitution. I had an inkling that it was frowned upon, but I figured that not being singled out by a law was more of an implied right cobbled together from six or seven other phrases in several other amendments.

        Wow, my opinion of Congress is somehow even lower. An impressive feat.

    • I completely agree, but unfortunately the only group that can strike this down has recently shown that they'll gladly apply twisted logic to political arguments they support while applying the exact opposite logic to political arguments they oppose. My guess is that if they're forced to decide on the validity of this law, they'll favor the ban since it's against a Chinese company, and that will set a precedent to uphold legislation that singles out companies or individuals.
  • Hey, credit where credit is due.

    We actually got both houses to pass this attempt and Biden actually signed it.

    It is at least a start.

    The problem is....this gives WAY too much time....TT will still be fully able to affect and sway this years election.

    • Yes, what an odd coincidence, with a completely unexpected side effect.

    • TT will still be fully able to affect and sway this years election.

      Don't worry, I'm sure the affect will be cancelled out by Russia's meddling on our domestic social media networks. Besides, what's China gonna do anyway, convince people to vote for the anti-China candidate or the anti-China candidate? Yeah, I do realize Trump now claims to have had a change of heart about TikTok, but I think that's mostly just because he hates the idea of Biden getting credit for something he tried to do first.

      • by jmccue ( 834797 )

        Besides, what's China gonna do anyway, convince people to vote for the anti-China candidate or the anti-China candidate?

        China along with Russia will want Trump only because he will pretty much end NATO allow allow Russia to take over Ukraine. That alone will be enough to hurt the US a lot. Then the next step for China would be Taiwan.

        • China along with Russia will want Trump only because he will pretty much end NATO allow allow Russia to take over Ukraine. That alone will be enough to hurt the US a lot. Then the next step for China would be Taiwan.

          You could just as easily make the argument that OPEC has the ability to manipulate our elections in such a manner, too. Biden is really concerned that high gas prices might hurt his reelection chances, even to the point that he's considering tapping the strategic petroleum reserve again. Funny how nobody ever wants to suggest banning foreign oil, though...

  • which is that this doesn't solve anything. If China wants to manipulate us they can do it like Russia does with troll & bot farms. And it's probably not a good precedence to set that our government can block off an app from a nation that isn't formally sanctioned.
    • by UMichEE ( 9815976 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:49AM (#64421190)

      The precedent is already there. The legislation is just behind the times. There were laws relating to foreign ownership of radio stations, then tv stations, and now it's social media. I'm surprised it took this long to happen given that the precedent is so clear.

      While I find the security argument sufficient to justify a divestiture, the fair trade argument is even more compelling. The security argument is about what might happen, whereas the fair trade argument is based around already established fact. Communist China blocks access of American social media companies, even if they'll localize data/servers. Why should the United States not do the same to social media companies from Communist China?

      • by uncqual ( 836337 )

        radio stations, then tv stations

        Were these not justified under the premise that these used the limited spectrum available and doled out by the federal government? I.e., if all the TV stations were owned by foreign entities, the public would have had no access through that (then) important medium to access any content not curated by a foreign government.

        TT is quite different. It uses bandwidth that is, effectively, unlimited and that is not allocated by the government and there are many alternative platforms

        • Why should US residents be denied access to foreign speech when they could not be denied access (due to the First Amendment) to that same speech if it were domestically generated?

          Except that TikTok isn't even analogous to a foreign broadcaster broadcasting foreign speech. TikTok's US content largely consists of videos produced by American creators. The potential ban would deplatform an entire social media network of American users. How the free speech implications of such an action managed to slip past the minds of so many elected representatives, is a truly disturbing revelation.

          • by uncqual ( 836337 )

            I don't know if most TT content consists of content created by Americans or if the content consumed by Americans just happens to be that produced by Americans while much of the content available is from foreign producers but is ignored by most American consumers (due language and cultural barriers).

            But I think your point is valid regardless - as long as one American is denied the platform, the argument stands to some extent.

            Perhaps I'm missing something (I hope I am - but fear that I'm not) and this isn't p

      • Why should the United States not do the same to social media companies from Communist China?

        Tit for tat behavior will ensure that equilibrium is never reached. Go away with such primitive ideas.

        That being said, Tik Tok is indeed a threat to the social order of the USA... but, so is Facebook and Reddit and and and. No other company that is a threat is being dismantled; therefore, this legislation is bad and must be rescinded. Any law that is made regarding this must apply equally to ALL actors, both foreign and domestic.

      • Didn't apply to cable. Cable came in being in some conservative high times and the doctrine wasn't extended to it. To see corporate america diddled this way today would be pretty funny. I mean money guy's gonna package and sell snake oil. We might as well have fun watching them bend into pretzels. Fairness Doctrine on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
        Wanna see some corporate chaos, the FCC can re-enact it with a vote I think. Anyway, weren't the 50's super great when we were free of all that government regulations?
    • by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) * on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @12:34PM (#64421362)

      TikTok itself is banned inside China. Many western social media and news organizations are also banned there. The precedence is already there.

      The difference between trolls and bot farms and manipulation directly from the social media platform is gas lighting is significantly easier. The platform has all of a user's graph data and can directly measure engagement with manipulative content. If they detect any engagement they can push less subtle manipulative content and accelerate as they measure increased engagement.

      Trolls and bot farms don't have the same level of feedback. They're certainly not ineffective but their targeting is not nearly as precise. TikTok in particular is problematic in that Chinese intelligence services have direct access to and influence on the platform.

      This is concerning not just with telemetry and graph data but also influence campaigns. Because the weighs in "the algorithm" of any social media feed are completely opaque to the end user there's no way to know the difference between organic content, stuff the user engaged with knowingly, and content inserted to wag the dog. This is used by platforms for advertising but works the exact same way for manipulating for any reason.

      • TikTok itself is banned inside China. Many western social media and news organizations are also banned there. The precedence is already there.

        That's not really the flex you imagine it to be. China bans western social media apps because they believe it is a corrupting influence on their populace. Or, in other words, their government sees the citizens in much the same way as a parent sees their immature children.

    • which is that this doesn't solve anything. If China wants to manipulate us they can do it like Russia does with troll & bot farms.

      The above is like arguing why plug one hole below the water line when the ship is also taking on water from other holes.

      I hope we can all appreciate the slight difference between foreign state actors being a neo or agent smith and just another unprivileged luser bound by the constraints of the "platform".

    • which is that this doesn't solve anything. If China wants to manipulate us they can do it like Russia does with troll & bot farms.

      That's because it's not really about foreign manipulation. It's that Meta and YouTube's short format offerings aren't as popular with the young kids, and they see a potential future where something like WeChat comes along and dethrones them in other aspects of the social media sphere as well.

      Nobody wants to be the next "MySpace", and these days the established social media players spend enough lobbying money to make sure that never happens, so they can keep legally buying up domestic competitors, and getti

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Rebecca Watson on YouTube made a good point which is that this doesn't solve anything. If China wants to manipulate us they can do it like Russia does with troll and bot farms.

      That's a bad point because there are game-changing differences in what you can do with troll+bot farms vs owning the platform.
      1. With troll+bot farms you get analytics based on how users interact with your ads+comments. But if you own the platform then you get maybe a thousand times as many datapoints per user -- these allow for vastly better AI training, say, and better leverage.
      2. With troll+bot farms, every post/ad is a concrete thing that everyone can see and trace back to source. But if you own the pla

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday April 24, 2024 @11:52AM (#64421198) Homepage

    which effectively forced the Senate to consider the measures together

    What a stupid way to legislate. Every bill ought to gave a single, specified purpose.

    • I thought things of this kind only happened in Brazil.
    • which effectively forced the Senate to consider the measures together

      What a stupid way to legislate. Every bill ought to gave a single, specified purpose.

      True, but right now those “stupid” people in charge of making “stupid” legislative decisions, are laughing all the way to the bank. ALL of them. On both “sides” pitted against each other. For profit.

      And then we have the people voting to sustain that, re-electing over and over again.

    • What a stupid way to legislate. Every bill ought to gave a single, specified purpose.

      Eh? Why would we want to make corruption more difficult? This is the only way to pass bad law with any sort of regularity. Why would you want to stop that? Are you not one of the beneficiaries of such policies? Stop whining about your bad luck if you are not.

  • This has nothing to do with preventing China from influencing our elections, it has to do with allowing Israel to keep influencing our elections.

    https://www.voanews.com/a/effo... [voanews.com]

  • I dislike TikTok, but it's frankly a fraction of the threat of Meta's offerings...but Meta is based in California and TikTok is not...although they have 7,000 employees in the USA, which is shockingly high to me for such a simple platform, but not out of line in comparison to their competitors. We're protecting local industry...and honestly, I barely have a problem with that on the surface, just fear the tit-for-tat that follows. Everything ByteDance threat was an unproven hypothetical and didn't make sen
  • Would TikTok's company shut down the social network, or wait for a court decision on the law's constitutionality before doing so?

    It would certainly not divest. Partly, the government of the company's homeland will not allow it. Partly, why should that company bother to sell, when closure is the easy way out?

    • They'll probably just spin TikTok off to some US owned holding company that ByteDance continues to own a large chunk of.

      That gives the politicians their perceived win against China without really changing much of anything.

  • I was honestly surprised this went through. Billionaire Jeff Yass owns 15B of ByteDance. And he is a huge GOP donor. Also Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna are big owners. They are not going to appreciate the hit TT will take while they untangle how to divest it. But I guess on an election year even the GOP wants to be seen as 'doing things' for the US and they were willing to risk donations for it.
  • ...not even China. Despite TikTok turning over "content moderation" (i.e. censorship) to the Feds in the US it's still not good enough for them. Either because they haven't completely merged with the deep state the way Google and Facebook have, because too many videos of Israeli atrocities are posted too quickly to nerf with the algorithmic hammer, or both.

    This is a joke of a farce.

  • The following countries allow American-owned social media platforms. They could use the same (financial/security) arguments, right?

    Canada
    United Kingdom
    Australia
    Germany
    France
    Japan
    South Korea
    Brazil
    Mexico
    Netherlands

    • No because as NATO allies they would be forced to declare war on each other as the US would be under attack.
  • The following countries allow American-owned social media platforms. They could use the same (financial/security) arguments, right?

    Canada
    United Kingdom
    Australia
    Germany
    France
    Japan
    South Korea
    Brazil
    Mexico
    Netherlands

  • I sense a disturbance in the lawfirm market. How long will this take to get to the Supreme Court? Years?

    It will pay for some vacations, though.

  • It's a public convenience. Only use it if you have to, live there if you like the smell of piss and shit.

  • "From this point forward, the product formerly known as TikTok has been renamed to this symbol that has been specifically designed to be incapable of being printed by U.S. printers."
  • ...there is nothing new under the sun for authoritarian regimes. Meet the new boss.... How DARE the kiddos share OBL's "Letter to America" and actually read it for themselves! Don't they know they are supposed to accept all regime narratives without question? So the countdown begins for Telegram, then Rumble, then Substack, then X....
  • Back when this was Trump's idea... they said it was crazy and unconstitutional and immoral and illegal and unfair!

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