US lawmakers vote 50-0 to force sale of TikTok despite angry calls from users
Lawmaker: TikTok must "sever relationship with the Chinese Communist Party."
Lawmaker: TikTok must "sever relationship with the Chinese Communist Party."
I don’t think it has to do with people of the western world seeing what’s being done either (they don’t and won’t if TikTok is the thing they’re using).
Tiktok is literally how my nieces, nephews, and their peer groups have been learning about American malfeasance, but sure, they're TOTALLY not seeing anything.
It’s just about gathering data and also having control over a service that could be used to influence people. It wouldn’t matter if it’s China or Russia (mostly white) in control of it.
Bull, if it was 'just about gathering data' they'd go after Zuck and Musk too. (And no, the wrist-slappings they've 'endured' thus far don't count, Meta and Twitter bans have NEVER been floated, OR sailed through Congress as easily as this proposed Tiktok ban has.) Further, if Russia were considered 'mostly white', NATO wouldn't be trying to encircle and exterminate them. Try again.
Is it? Many people saw through the racism of slavery and yet still used it, because racism was an excuse, not a reason.
Further bull, America's done everything in its power to keep forms of slavery in play; specifically pipelining the minorities they used to keep as chattel into prison slavery instead. It's always maintenance of an Anglo status quo. Don't try again here; I know you're not going to go look up the Fourteenth Amendment to see how the Anglos have historically played with legalese to maintain unjust systems.
There are plenty of bad people, but it’s hard to say any group is bad by default.
Four hundred years of slavery, genocide, resource extraction, ignorance of sovereignty, rank and blatant funding of terrorism, and extrajudicial murder says what now? Tell your handler I said hi.
They already have control over Xitter and Facebook/Instagram.
America already controls Tiktok's data via Oracle server farms in Virginia, so that automatically doesn't track; make it make sense. Why is there a need to ban them that DOESN'T boil down to the usual anglo pearlclutching trying to start new Yellow Perils and Red Scares? And why haven't Twitter, Meta, Instagram, or Trust Social been banned yet? Make. It. Make. Sense.
I'm from the EU, where there's laws in place for some industries to put EU user data exclusively on servers that are in the EU. I'm assuming that the US doesn't have that kind of law applying to TikTok, and that the US servers are an infrastructure decision by Tiktok’s owner company. If I'm right, then that's your answer. If I'm wrong then they really don't need to ban them.
For the record, please keep in mind that I'm not defending any party here. I'm very aware of post cold war yellow/red scare stories, I just don't see how this inevitably has to be the consequence of one.
I just don’t see how this inevitably has to be the consequence of one.
Then you're clearly not paying attention; but that's to be expected of a Five Eyes vassal ig. You can say you're 'not defending any party' all you like, the very geopolitical viewpoint you've been propagandized into does that for you.
WTF are you calling me?
They're being a bit antisocial and I don't defend that, but they're referencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes , an intelligence agreement among the anglosphere, and then saying you're from a vassal state of that alliance (really just a vassal of the US).
I'm only ever really antisocial against anglo bullshit anymore and this thread is full of it.
Socialists should seek to be pro-social in all contexts. Being bitter won't help you do anything but preach to the choir.
Bull, if it was 'just about gathering data' they'd go after Zuck and Musk too.
They're amaerican. They already have them.
Further, if Russia were considered 'mostly white', NATO wouldn't be trying to encircle and exterminate them. Try again.
Dude, if NATO wanted them destroyed they wouldn't be as passive as they have been. It has nothing to do with race. There are plenty of Russian/Caucasian people in the west.
Further bull, America's done everything in its power to keep forms of slavery in play; specifically pipelining the minorities they used to keep as chattel into prison slavery instead.
I agree this is happening, but is it because of race or because it's an easy excuse. You can't tell the difference.
Four hundred years of slavery, genocide, resource extraction, ignorance of sovereignty, and extrajudicial murder says what now? Tell your handler I said hi.
Show me a nation that doesn't have exploitation and/or genocide in their past. There isn't one. All nations exploit. Governments are corrupt. I'm not arguing the US is good, I'm arguing all nations are bad. You are just willfully ignorant. Whatever government you support (Russia presumably, by your instance?) it has exploited people at some point in time at least. It almost certainly is even now, or someone else would be in power.
There isn't one. All nations exploit. Governments are corrupt. I'm not arguing the US is good, I'm arguing all nations are bad.
Cool, why haven't any Black people been shot in China?
i hate when liberals do this, the "i hate all countries" thing. America invades another country every 3 years on average and this is just as bad as China, a country that hasn't invaded anyone since 1979? What is this reasoning. This is like those Protestants who say lying about your homework is an equal sin as murdering someone
It's because it's not reasoning, it's a thought-terminating cliche to help them advocate for maintaining the status quo while not feeling like they're in favor of the status quo.
I've cheated on my homework before. So I guess it's time to be deeply unserious
I guess this was shared on hexbear or lemygrad. I'll see it soon enough from there I guess.
Why does China not allow all western companies into their ecosystem? Is it because of race? Obviously not. It's about power and control, and I'm not dense enough to think otherwise.
Imma be real the people who argue like that online aren’t usually neurotypical lol
Maybe, but they'd in 9 of 10 cases literally rather die than admit there IS a divergent diagnosis there; so as long as they labor under that delusion, I've got no reason to treat them like they are divergent. I am not some pacifistic abbot in some 12th century monastery; if I read you as an opp, I'm coming for your neck regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Alright. Explain how China having their own ecosystem is better. I know what they're all doing. You're the one saying any one is doing it because of a race thing.
Yup, I'm saying it; and I'm not humoring 'debate' on the topic from anglos. 'Debating' you and yours is kin to trying to debate a sinkhole. Empty air flung down an indifferent, almost-smug pit. Any way out from under the thumb of you and everyone like you is only a good thing achieved by anyone who manages it, and I pray I live to get to watch your system crumble under your impotent fingers.
You came here dude. I didn't go to you to "debate".
I pray I get to see it crumble too. However, I'm not dillusional enough to think it's just one thing that needs to crumble.
You keep flooding my inbox with white bullshit like you know better than me; you're trying to debate. I don't debate the kinds of people John Brown would've shot. You already showed your hand when you tried to sidestep past America's historical, continued, and unbroken malfeasance over the past four hundred years.
Stop being a "debate bro" here and acting like you aren't. You came here. You are not the one being flooded. Look at how many people are replying to me with the same crap every time.
I didn't sidestep US history at all. The US has racism literally written into its constitution. It was useful to those in power, but many have writting saying they thought it was wrong and evil and black people were fully people. They still used it. That's worse than just racism. It's pure evil.
However, I'm not blinded by hatred over a certain group. China has an entire seperate internet ecosystem. Is it because of racism? China has a long history of racism too. Obviously it is not, and its about power and control. The same logic is true for the US. They'd do the same thing if it were Russian owned and Russia is primarily white like the US. Assuming it's racism makes you ignore the actual issues.
Now find a new thread to be a debate bro in. Leave me alone.
Explain how China having their own ecosystem is better
This seems self-explanatory to me. The US will do whatever it can to instigate color revolution -- having a record of doing so in the past, see Facebook being used for revolts in the Middle East -- so having companies that ultimately need to answer to the Chinese government rather than the US one is better for national security. It's also better for China's own economic development to have domestic companies need to figure out how to make decent platforms.
China has no such record of instigating revolts and historically is much more opposed to infringing on the sovereignty of UN members (except Vietnam
).This seems self-explanatory to me. The US will do whatever it can to instigate color revolution -- having a record of doing so in the past, see Facebook being used for revolts in the Middle East -- so having companies that ultimately need to answer to the Chinese government rather than the US one is better for national security. It's also better for China's own economic development to have domestic companies need to figure out how to make decent platforms.
Exactly. What they use it for doesn't really matter, though implying China doesn't use soft power to control nations is really dumb. They may not invade, but they constantly use and advance soft power to influence other nations. I'm not saying there's anything particularly wrong with that as that's what nations do. They do do it though.
Your shrugging is incredibly annoying and disingenuous and "soft power" is being used to weasel completely illegitimate claims. Does China like doing soft power with its pop culture exports (such as they exist) and even the mere existence of platforms like AliExpress? Sure. Does a platform run more by western than China represent a threat by the latter to subvert the US? Not without actual substantiation.
China's interest in bilateralism is neither saintly nor even particularly based on being a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but the fact that it knows that it wins by playing the long game and giving itself time to develop, while its main enemy is perhaps the most effectively pugnacious in world history (contrast with a state like the DPRK that talks a lot of shit but ultimately isn't getting into any new wars, just staying in the one it was founded under). China is averse to fomenting revolt in the US or elsewhere because it wants to undercut power politics and play to its strengths rather than those of its enemy. To do that, it has a reputation to uphold that it won't imperil with some hail mary tiktok brainwashing scheme that would certainly fail if it even had the power to pull it off (and, again, tiktok is already run by parties who don't take orders from China).
The US isn't doing this out of strategic interests against the platform inherently, it is doing it as some combination of a scapegoating kabuki theater and to pave the way for further protectionist policy by normalizing banning things just for being Chinese on a flimsy red scare pretext.
I think you've already had this quote paraphrased to you, but I didn't see it properly rendered, so here's the original:
Many westerners come to socialism not out of necessity, but out of disillusionment. We are raised with the idea that Liberal Democracy is the best system of political expression humanity has devised. When confronted with the reality of its shortcomings, rather than narrowly discard liberalism or electoralism, the western anti-capitalist tends to draw sweeping conclusions about the inadequacy of all existing systems. Curiously, though it would at first seem that such denunciations are more principled and severe, they are in fact more compatible with existing and widespread beliefs about the supremacy of the western system. That is to say, when a Marxist-Leninist asserts the superiority of existing socialist experiments, they are directly challenging the idea that westerners are at the forefront of political development. By contrast, the assertions from anarchists and social democrats that we need to build a more utopian future out of our current apex are compatible not only with each other, as discussed earlier, but also do not really offend bourgeois society at large. They in fact end up not sounding too different from the arch-imperialist Winston Churchill holding forth on how ours is the worst system, except for all the others which have been tried. Western chauvinists, consciously or unconsciously, struggle with the idea that they should study and humbly take lessons from the imperial periphery. It is much easier for the chauvinist, psychologically, to position oneself as at the very front of a new vanguard.
From the excellent essayist Roderic Day, "Why Marxism?"
I agree this is happening, but is it because of race or because it's an easy excuse. You can't tell the difference.
things have multiple reasons.
Like when a forest fire happens, it doesn't happen ONLY because the weather was dry and ONLY because the weather was hot. It was a combination of both of them.
Likewise, when anglo-crackers pull this shit, it's not ONLY because they're racist, or ONLY because they want to personally control it. It's because they're racist AND want control, mostly so they can use it to propagandize people into being more racist.
Generally, when a certain event happens, it has multiple causes! Single cause phenomena are very rare in organic systems!
Sure, it has multiple causes. Anyone intillegent is just using race as an excuse. China has an ecosystem almost exclusive to China. Is it because they're racist or because they want control, or both?
You might be surprised how many "intelligent" people can also be sincerely racist.
Also, I believe at least one reason people are upset with you here in this thread is because of how hard you are trying to "prove" the innocence of someone being racist, or "prove" the unreality of a system or institution being "truly/authentically" racist, when ultimately the end result is the same: pure racist outcomes. Even if somehow you could prove with full receipts that racism, as you claim, is used as a inauthentic tool for oppression, the energy you are taking up to hound this point is painfully disproportionate and misplaced, if even technically correct at all.
I can't "prove" anything. However, a whole bunch of people coming into here to tell me how I'm wrong and it has to be racism from a certain two instances is a little hypocritical. They weren't in this thread much until this, and they all flood in to tell me that I'm wrong, without any reason except "it just is racist."
...when ultimately the end result is the same: pure racist outcomes.
No, the end result is not the same. People recognizing that all of these institutions are doing the same thing allows us to solve issues. However, some of the people here think that the institutions they like, for whatever reason, aren't doing this. They come here to defend China or attack the US, but China has a firewall and generally has their own exclusive ecosystem. What's different with the US forcing one app to be western owned? Is China doing it because of racism? No. That's pretty naive. Thinking this can only lead to outrage at some people and can't solve the actual issues because the wrong issues are being addressed.
Even if somehow you could prove with full receipts that racism, as you claim, is used as a inauthentic tool for oppression, the energy you are taking up to hound this point is painfully disproportionate and misplaced, if even technically correct at all.
Dude, I was here on my home instance and dozens of people show up to tell me I'm wrong from two other instances. I'm putting in too much energy? Why is it never you guys putting in too much energy, or you guys being the "debate bros". You came at me.
Dude, if NATO wanted them destroyed they wouldn't be as passive as they have been. It has nothing to do with race. There are plenty of Russian/Caucasian people in the west.
This is a bit silly. With how NATO works, they'd be inviting WWIII and do serious damage to ties with China that they are critically dependent on, and there's a good chance the alliance would implode if they were that much more aggressive since many of the countries in it don't want war, they just want to cower behind whoever has the biggest gun, to say nothing of the fact that the US government is already unpopular and would probably be forced to start conscripting soldiers, which would produce massive backlash. There are a lot of reasons for the US to stick to proxy wars for as long as it can manage.
