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What do people here think about the proposed ban on TikTok?
Whether you are a user or not, I think it's an interesting question. Trump's administration tried and ultimately failed to get it past the court system. Biden's administration withdrew Trump's EO and instead has tried to mount a bipartisan effort to kill it at the congressional level. Based on the hearing last week (which was a farce in many ways), the last time bipartisan support was this unified was against Jeffrey Epstein.
Now for the really interesting part; if you read the RESTRICT Act bill S.686, it confers tremendous powers onto the Department of Commerce.
For example, accessing a banned platform using a VPN will in itself be a criminal act. The Secretary of Commerce will have broad discretion to deem a technology product or service as an "unacceptable risk". Same with the designation of a "foreign adversary".
Of course, there's a good for the goose argument that China thinks nothing of banning American technology companies like Google so why shouldn't we do the same?
And then there is the theory that big tech lobbying is behind all of this, especially Zuckerberg, because TikTok has been eating their lunch with its meteoric growth. In fact, one resolution is TikTok selling itself to an American tech company, which might be the end game here.
TT proposed a deal with Oracle to store all its US data in Texas and wall it off from the rest of its company and (theoretically) the government of China too. That proposal has not gone over with Biden or the members of Congress that participated in the hearing.
Any thoughts?
Whether you are a user or not, I think it's an interesting question. Trump's administration tried and ultimately failed to get it past the court system. Biden's administration withdrew Trump's EO and instead has tried to mount a bipartisan effort to kill it at the congressional level. Based on the hearing last week (which was a farce in many ways), the last time bipartisan support was this unified was against Jeffrey Epstein.
Now for the really interesting part; if you read the RESTRICT Act bill S.686, it confers tremendous powers onto the Department of Commerce.
For example, accessing a banned platform using a VPN will in itself be a criminal act. The Secretary of Commerce will have broad discretion to deem a technology product or service as an "unacceptable risk". Same with the designation of a "foreign adversary".
Of course, there's a good for the goose argument that China thinks nothing of banning American technology companies like Google so why shouldn't we do the same?
And then there is the theory that big tech lobbying is behind all of this, especially Zuckerberg, because TikTok has been eating their lunch with its meteoric growth. In fact, one resolution is TikTok selling itself to an American tech company, which might be the end game here.
TT proposed a deal with Oracle to store all its US data in Texas and wall it off from the rest of its company and (theoretically) the government of China too. That proposal has not gone over with Biden or the members of Congress that participated in the hearing.
Any thoughts?
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