Here's Bernie Sanders from a year ago talking about how a handful of companies control the news people see, read, and hear. TL:DR - He makes the argument that it's not fake news, that journalists are usually hard-working and honest. He says the problem is the limitation of allowed discussion - what topics make it to the consumer. He says for instance that he's never asked about wealth and income inequality.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven't proven able to control. If the issues justifying a potential ban were truly data security or mental health as some argue (not without merit mind you), then the legislation to address those issues would look a lot different and include companies like Meta, Google, Instagram, etc. Those are valid concerns but the new measure is clearly not designed around them.
Finally, we've seen how Trump can tie up the courts for months on end even after all his self-snitching. Thus I very much doubt we'll see any actual action in the 9 months + 3 months grace period laid out for the resolution of the TikTok matter. There are too many constitutional and business law challenges in my (admittedly layman's) reading of expert opinion.
I feel like this ban WILL start a monopoly. Since Facebook does the same amount or more data mining than TikTok, Facebook will have to be banned alongside Instagram, making YouTube Shorts a monopoly, as there really isn't any other alternatives that are relevant.
This makes sense as there still billions of other potential users around the world. Add to that the fact that other nations like content of their own cultures in their own languages. It means even if they will feel the change the platform won't collapse because it is missing US users. Now If other countries follow in the US footsteps then it becomes a different story.
Still think it's a baited headline given their stated intention to go to court to fight the "unconstitutional ruling". I'm not so sure the constitution gives foreign companies many legal rights so in that regard they'd perhaps be more protected if they were an American company. Whoops.
TikTok's 80% of investors who aren't ByteDance won't pass up billions of dollars in cash either if the alternative is that they forever get zero from the American market.
They've been investing heavily in the US market for the last couple years too, so I doubt they are in the black.
They've just all around played politics the American way very poorly. I can't really comment on whether that's good or bad but I'm blown away this Shou Chew CEO dude still has a job after this came down.
I hope that Lemmy server open source software allows extensions or plugins that enable those that run instances to have the option to automatically and continually back them up to the permaweb blockchain Arweave. What do you think about that?
Does Lemmy instance server software already allow for plugins or extensions to be utilized in a rather frictionless or efficient way? Hmmm