Comment by muglug
1 day ago
Right, Congress was shown some pretty convincing evidence that execs in China pull the strings, and those execs are vulnerable to Chinese government interference.
As we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, social media companies based in the US are also vulnerable to US government interference — but that’s the way they like it.
They have?
They released a Marty Rimm-level report citing that pro-Palestinian was mentioned more than pro-Israeli content in ratios that differed from Meta products. This was the 'smoking gun' of manipulation when it's more of a sign Meta was the one doing the manipulation.
The opinion today has almost nothing to do with how content is controlled on the platform; the court is very clear that they'd have upheld the statute based purely on the data collection issue.
That report was pivotal during the vote for the law and belies the actual interests.
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I don't know what Congress has said but there absolutely is evidence that TikTok has been used to spy on users for political reasons. A US based engineer claims that he saw evidence that Hong Kong protestors were spied on in 2018 at the behest of a special committee representing the CCP's interests within ByteDance. This is not surprising, most major corporations within China maintain a special committee representing the government's interests to company executives
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/6/7/china-spied-on-ho...
The DHS does that in the United States.
Every major social media and dating application has a law enforcement portal. This was documented in BlueLeaks.
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That's the way I like it for my children. Pardon the demagogue. The US, being the awful mess it is is still 100x better IMHO than the chinese government. It's the lesser evil kind of thing and honestly the reason I believe that democracy is 100% THE way to go. Things can only get US level nefarious with democracy. Far from perfect but much less evil.
The only problem with democracy is that it's so fragile and susceptible to bad non-democrat actors intervention, which is more of an awareness problem.
If you think the US is immune to authoritarianism...
Do people not remember 2020-2021?
Is X vulnerable to Chinese government interference because its American executive has other business interests in China at stake?
I’d argue the TikTok remedy should be applied to X, too.
This should be applied to all social media.
Media flat out.
No, X doesn't have a corporate governance structure that requires Chinese government control, because it is a US company.
Companies in China (and especially those of prominence) have formal structures and regulations that require them to cooperate with the government, and sometimes require the companies to allow the government to intervene in operations if necessary.
It is not possible for a CCP official to show up to a board meeting at X and direct the company to take some action, because that isn't how US corporations work.
A CCP official could show up at a Tesla board meeting and announce they're going to seize Gigafactory Shanghai unless Musk takes down some content on X. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference.
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You are assuming a lot about supposed evidence nobody has said anything specific about. One shouldn't also assume people in Congress know how to evaluate any evidence. Nor justices, based on the questions they asked.
As a matter of political science and public choice theory, the legislature is the branch of government most trusted to collect information and make these kinds of deliberations.
You might buy that, but I don't. Unless they can actually put forward publicly compelling evidence of a national security risk, this can only be seen as a handout to Facebook by the government. This saga just gives more evidence that the US government exists primarily to serve the interests of US's oligarch class. Aside for those oligarchs, it does nothing to serve US citizens' interests.
Would you call Marjorie Taylor Greene a qualified and trusted investigator for the american people? I sure wouldn’t. Talking about what the legislature is supposed to be is irrelevant. What the legislature actually is is relevant.
Congress members speak of space lasers and weather control... I'm not sure they're competent as a whole. Actually, it reminds me of the Russian guy that always spouts nonsense about nuking UK into oblivion, and that theory that he's just kept around to make the real evil people look sane.
Good thing Mr Zuckerberg is a shining beacon of independence from the US government.
He's not a formally designated foreign adversary, at least not yet.
The difference is you can easily prosecute Zuck
Easily? No. Within the bounds of the US Constitution, yes.
No. Zuck is very securely within the class of citizens that is immune to prosecution within the US.
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Gigabillionaires with immense influence don't get prosecuted.