TikTok Ban/RESTRICT Act

B

Brewer

Sparrow
All indications are that the US is trying to ban TikTok. TikTok gets hate for promoting shallowness, short attention spans, etc, but I find it to be an useful platform in moderation. I've found a lot of interesting info (recipes, travel tips) and entertainment (talented musicians, artists). It's also a pretty redpilled platform - there are a lot of people calling out the "true owners" of the country, bringing attention to violent crime statistics, and so on, the kind of stuff that gets nuked in 10 seconds on Facebook or Instagram.

There are two bills making their way through Congress, and they both appear to have wide bipartisan support. One of them would apparently go so far as to criminalize using a VPN to access any banned site, punishable by a $250,000 fine or 20 years in prison.

As far as I can tell, the ban doesn't have anything to do with China stealing data. The issue is that it's that it's a massively influential platform that isn't moderated by the "people who usually have control of the media."
 
Bird

Bird

Ostrich
Catholic
Brewer said:
One of them would apparently go so far as to criminalize using a VPN to access any banned site, punishable by a $250,000 fine or 20 years in prison.
Click to expand...

This is ridiculous.
If you use VPN, how would it be possible to identify the person's identity?
I mean, that's why people use VPN services, to avoid being identified.
 
ed pluribus unum

ed pluribus unum

Ostrich
Protestant
Like everything else that is done in the name of protecting and safeguarding the American people, this will be weaponized against Americans.
It's easy to gin up support to pass the bill when it's big bad China as the target. But once that precedent is set, which platform is next - Gab? Telegram?

The bottom line is that TPTB don't want an app that collects personal data that they're not in control of.
 
Laner

Laner

Hummingbird
Protestant
Gold Member
Call me crazy but I think TikTok might just be a better platform. It seems to be a more positive experience, where as the Silicon Valley big tech babies are busy trying to divide its users.

Google is failing. Facebook is failing. And so after years of lining legislators pockets, they have now asked in the ultimate favour; Ban a product that caught them off guard.
 
scorpion

scorpion

Pelican
Gold Member
Government line: TikTok is handing over U.S. citizens' data to the Chinese Communist Party! This cannot stand!

Translation: TikTok is refusing to hand hand over U.S. citizens' data to us! This cannot stand!

That's basically the gist of it. It will be interesting to see the fallout if they actually go through with it. From what I've seen, a LOT of people are tremendously addicted to this app, and will be majorly pissed if the government bans it. I saw an article that some Democrat strategists are worried the aggrieved TikTok crowd will blame Joe Biden for a ban and the Dems will subsequently lose a generation of voters. :laugh: We can only hope.
 
Viktor Zeegelaar

Viktor Zeegelaar

Crow
Orthodox Inquirer
Don't put your hope in politics, or you'll be severely disappointed. I don't believe anything of it. If it's detrimental to you, especially to the youth, then it gets promoted. Maybe there's some privacy blabla things that they'll make some amendments for or so, but ''banning'' this stuff doesn't make sense for 1. it destroys people, especially the new generations, so it has to be promoted and 2. it cannot be enforced anyway. And also, if it was because it isn't owned, why don't they just buy it and own it? They print the money and have all the major social media / tech companies. Nah, probably a smokescreen to give the normies a dopamine hit to stimulate their US vs China fake antithesis.
 
Laner

Laner

Hummingbird
Protestant
Gold Member
scorpion said:
Government line: TikTok is handing over U.S. citizens' data to the Chinese Communist Party! This cannot stand!

Translation: TikTok is refusing to hand hand over U.S. citizens' data to us! This cannot stand!

That's basically the gist of it. It will be interesting to see the fallout if they actually go through with it. From what I've seen, a LOT of people are tremendously addicted to this app, and will be majorly pissed if the government bans it. I saw an article that some Democrat strategists are worried the aggrieved TikTok crowd will blame Joe Biden for a ban and the Dems will subsequently lose a generation of voters. :laugh: We can only hope.
Click to expand...

Exactly. One has to be pretty naïve to think that none of the SV tech companies are taking all your data. They ALL are doing it.

TikTok is just a better search engine than google. Most young people don't even use google for search, its just straight to TikTok - and they are correct. It is a better search engine, and much more unbiased and relevant.
 
Thomas More

Thomas More

Crow
Protestant
Bird said:
This is ridiculous.
If you use VPN, how would it be possible to identify the person's identity?
I mean, that's why people use VPN services, to avoid being identified.
Click to expand...
The government will run the VPNs as a honeypot and collect all the information for every user. If you try to use a VPN outside of US jurisdiction, they'll spy on you through your ISP.

These companies are all full of (((former))) FBI agents the way Twitter was until Musk took it over and fired almost everybody.
 
Feyoder

Feyoder

Pelican
Laner said:
Call me crazy but I think TikTok might just be a better platform. It seems to be a more positive experience, where as the Silicon Valley big tech babies are busy trying to divide its users.

Google is failing. Facebook is failing. And so after years of lining legislators pockets, they have now asked in the ultimate favour; Ban a product that caught them off guard.
Click to expand...

Yeah right, I wonder if this is actually more about crony capitalism. The China stuff rings false.
 
Easy_C

Easy_C

Peacock
Bird said:
This is ridiculous.
If you use VPN, how would it be possible to identify the person's identity?
I mean, that's why people use VPN services, to avoid being identified.
Click to expand...

Your ISP can see that you're using a VPN. For the most part the ISP can't see what you're doing on it, only that you have it.
The place the VPN protects your identity is at the end-destination where you're interacting with another system. That system sees the traffic as coming from the VPN's exit node.
Keep in mind anything else will still unmask you. The most common way is Google or Social Media cookies, but other device fingerprint information can also ID a unique user.
 
Bird

Bird

Ostrich
Catholic
I agree, one have to keep in mind to deal with cookies and canvas and addtitional browser related stuff.
It's not just using a VPN and you are safe.
 
A

andy dufresne

Pelican
Other Christian
Thomas More said:
The government will run the VPNs as a honeypot and collect all the information for every user. If you try to use a VPN outside of US jurisdiction, they'll spy on you through your ISP.

These companies are all full of (((former))) FBI agents the way Twitter was until Musk took it over and fired almost everybody.
Click to expand...
This is a good comment.

I believe most VPN's are already run as honeypots.
 
Easy_C

Easy_C

Peacock
The purpose of the VPN isn't to hide your identity for anything serious. There's other ways of doing that which are fairly cumbersome.

It's to minimize the amount of data mining that you're subjected to. It should be your goal to deprive the algorithms of as much of your data as possible (because that data allows you to be manipulated and predicted) and using a VPN is a big part of that.
 
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