Support for banning Tik Tok evaporated in the summer heat

boing
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Originally published at: Support for banning Tik Tok evaporated in the summer heat - Boing Boing

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It’s unfortunate(though not especially surprising) that the fuss about tiktok ended up largely confined to how it was a super-menacing tool of the sinister Chicom puppetmasters corrupting the youth; rather than encouraging any broader examination of just how grim and fraught with risk all the surveillance capitalist parasocial engagement mills are.

The various concerns about the operation were largely true; but immediately robbed of any actual potential for reform or reexamination by the assessment that they were problems because they were being done by the wrong people; rather than because they were things that ought not to be done.

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Meh. I don’t think banning TikTok was ever about censorship. There’s not any speech happening on TikTok that isn’t also happening on several other social media platforms, including by youth. TikTok may be their social media drug of choice now, but it’s not like there aren’t, and won’t continue to be, other options.

Banning TikTok was only ever performative. It’s the social media equivalent of the TSA making you take your shoes off. And it feeds the “China is the bogeyman” narrative the GOP sometimes wants to push. And I suspect the reason it died on the vine is that the GOP no longer found it productive to push that narrative.

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Perhaps only contributing via a republican majority in the House (o’representatives) and trump sycophants in general is: trump was set and determined to ban tiktok throughout his presidency and for sometime thereafter, yet following billionaire Jeffrey Yass (15% stake in tiktok) and Larry Ellison (similar) giving trump some ‘support’, plus Biden showing signs of being inclined to restrict tiktok, aaaaand trump executes a full-180 and became a full-blather advocate for tiktok.
ref1 | ref2 | ref3

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Dementia Don merely forgot why he hates it so much.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html

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“They looked at IP addresses of journalists who were using the TikTok app in an attempt to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information.”

TikTok is a legitimate security threat.

Also, broken clocks are correct twice a day.

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… surely that is a bipartisan consensus by now

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This is basically what the ban was about: the fear that the Chinese could use TikTok to get political, military, or intelligence secrets.

I don’t know how legitimate that fear is, since other apps could be used for the same thing with minimal effort.

But Russia doesn’t seem to be the bogeyman it used to be, so I guess China it is.

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i suspect the us govt prefers to be the the only nation state spying on us citizens.

in the case of bytedance, we dont just have possibilities, we have actions that have been confirmed true that have huge implications

i mean all these countries likely are doing this stuff but like you mentioned, china is the big bad now.

edited

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I think the concern is legit, but my theory is one reason the issue is quietly fading away is the realization as you say that it opens up a whole pandora’s box of paying attention to security, which everyone seems to prefer to ignore, slowly backing out of the room with the can of worms they just opened and wished they hadn’t.

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very good theory

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See also the current events with Brazil kicking out Twitter, or racist riots in the UK. It’s harder to pretend TikTok is a unique case when we have recent evidence of American companies doing similarly dangerous things to other countries. Continuing the flagellation of foreign entities now risks the potential of inducing some sober examination of social media closer to home.

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One result of this ban: Scientists at a media research college in Texas are currently unable to watch a popular media outlet on state-owned devices in order to conduct research. Those scientists are leaving the state because of this and other “anti-woke” laws passed by the governor.

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Do you have a link or the name of the college?

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Sent a PM to douglaslucas, but here is info for the group:
[Prohibited Technologies | Texas Department of Information Resources] Prohibited Technologies | Texas Department of Information Resources

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Thanks. Looks like it was the University of Texas at Austin. I wonder if they applied for an exemption; that Texas Dept. of Info Resources does have an option for that as does UT-Austin (I can’t post links yet): “Legitimate uses of TikTok to support university functions (e.g., law enforcement, any investigatory matters, academic research, etc.) will be considered, but you must request an exception through the UT Information Security Office.”

It reminds me a little of when federal government agencies were banned from using Huawei or even from using contractors who used Huawei. You could imagine the DOD or NSA or something quickly ripping out any Huawei equipment and replacing it with U.S.-manufactured gear. But Foreign Policy reported that for faraway federal employees like aid workers on continents using primarily Chinese or Chinese-backed telecom equipment, not so easy to suddenly switch.

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