The only thing I really feel bad for from this is the small town food banks/animal welfare societies/sanctuaries that were able to find alternative sources of incomes through Tiktok via their partner programs and through a wider audience. Apparently Instagram doesn’t pay as well, and Youtube shorts are abysmal for discovery.
I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, and my city dropped funding for them in 2023. Tiktok donations helped a lot more than you’d think. Highly encouraged people reading this to drop some food/donations off at your shelter of choice if you have any to spare.
TikTok being banned is good. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter should be banned as well. Closed, source, manipulative and harmful algorithms should be banned and these apps all use dark patterns in their design.
The fediverse and open social networks where the algorithms are open source and well understood and the user is allowed to choose their own algorithms is the only safe way to use social media.
Well it’s a good thing they banned TikTok because it has “Closed, source, manipulative and harmful algorithms” and not for some other reason
A government that can ban social media sites is going to base their choices of which ones to ban on their preferences - not yours.
The EU seems to be handling it fine, the point is not targeting specific sites but targeting user hostile behaviors against citizens
That is the thing that fear mongering against the Government always fails to address.
Yes, banning one thing out of ten that all do the same thing is wrong. Yes, we do not want to give the Government the ability to ban specific sites because history.
But banning or regulating algorithms, which are the actual problem, does not stop social media sites from existing. It just stops them from being able to manipulate massive groups of people by hiding/pushing the information the company wants one to see.
Unfortunately, the majority doesn’t see algorithmic social media as a bad thing because they really do like echo chambers, and politicians don’t ever seem to understand what a “root issue” is.
Inb4 Lemmy ban
If we left it up to our government, that’d probably be what happens
No no no my friend. You misunderstand USAing. You sweet sweet summer child.
Non-American here. This actually goes a long way in helping me to avoid US-centric news and content for the next 4 years. So, there’s that.
That’s an interesting perspective. Please enjoy having our stupid bullshit slightly further away from your face for a while! My only option is sticking my head in this hole in the ground.
I know! I’m so happy!
Calling it now, the supposed “rumors” of Musk wanting to buy out TikTok are suddenly going to become not-rumors on January 21st.
I’m no lawyer but I don’t even think it’s that complex.
The law as written states “…However, the prohibition does not apply to a covered application that executes a qualified divestiture as determined by the President.”
It goes on the clarify in a little more detail what a " qualified divestiture" is, but ultimately the determination seems to be by the President.
Trump can “make a deal” that he considers a “qualified divestiture” and allow the app again. For example ByteDance can sell TikTok to AmericaDance, a new company that just so happens to work for and does everything ByteDance does.
Now this wouldn’t hold up in any real court, but that would take A LONG time to resolve at which point Trump declares a win and likely everyone just moves on. Bonus during the 2028 election Vance or whomever can say that Democrats want to ban TikTok.
They’re not selling
I’m really surprised they’re not pushing the web version, which can operate in a way not covered by this ban.
It also can’t track the users nearly as well.
TikTok’s fate in the U.S. now lies in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who originally favored a TikTok ban during his first administration
…
Trump began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass. Yass is a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.
Stop the ban or we’ll burn your own platform to the ground.
Do it. Do a flip!
Pretty gross being violently ruled by a few fossils in wacky costumes.
The law allowing this happen was already passed, by a democratically* elected government. All the court is saying is that the law isn’t unconstitutional. They don’t decide what laws are “right” or “wrong”, merely that it doesn’t (in their opinion) contradict the constitution.
*how democratic it is is debatable, but still… an election did take place that put congress (and the president) in power
I know lots of people are mad, but I just see TikTok as another centralized platform that capitulates to special interests (read: money). I think the ban is a net positive, and I wouldn’t lose any sleep if they banned other centralized social media platforms.
It never feels good to have the rug pulled out from under you, but people will find better ways to communicate. Humans are nothing if not creative problem solvers.
Anyone know if it’s possible to take a program and “decompile” it? Like reverse engineering or something so it could be verified to be “clean?”
I imagine with all the resources the government has they could achieve such a thing if they were really concerned about national security and not really just worried about metas profits.
I mean what would Elon buying it have really changed about the actual code of the apps? It would just change who gets the profits, no?
Best you can do is a disassembler that will turn it into readable assembly or some kind of best-guess pseudocode, and you’ll have to reconstruct it into a higher level language from there by yourself. Or learn to read assembly I guess.
So if it’s possible then it’s possible for the government to have that done by people that are capable.
That would tell me then that it’s more than likely not a national security concern, it’s a profit concern. Apparently Zuckerberg was a major actor pushing for this ban as it is, he supposedly kept harping on the security aspect. :/
If the code were static and unchanging, sure. But it’s not possible to conduct such analysis every time an update is issued on a continuing basis, without fast becoming a hundreds of millions of dollars or more program.
So the better question isn’t whether it’s possible — it’s whether it’s feasible. And the answer is no, it’s not.
I think if pirates working on their bedroom PCs can release cracks and keygens only days after a game or other piece of software is out, then the government can probably keep up with app updates.
It’s a lot easier to scan for very specific code behavior than it is to scan for “anything useful for espionage”. And that still wouldn’t solve the question of what their server software is doing or where the collected data is ending up.
Oh yeah, with the resources the government has, they are more than capable of reverse-engineering everything the app is doing.
Unanimous?! Makes you wonder what they know that we might not.
Nothing to do with the data collection, the court was ruling on the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act’s constitutionality.
I think it’s more there is a precedence of the government blocking software they think is a threat - https://cmmcinfo.org/list-of-hardware-software-and-services-banned-by-us-government/
We give the government a lot of leeway when it comes to “national security”
Also, we’re not the first country to ban it - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/heres-what-happened-when-india-banned-tiktok
Ah yes boldly following in the liberatory footsteps of India.
Wasn’t claiming it was a good or bad call, just that the Supreme Court is about legality and there is history of the US banning software and a global history of banning this specific app.
Most of them[1] know a whole lot more about constitutional law than the average lemming.
When things are working correctly, the Supreme Court’s role is usually not very concerned with the facts of the case; its role is to resolve questions of law. Congress considered the facts including some classified briefings, decided that American app stores should be forbidden from distributing TikTok to American users, and made a law. The court was asked whether Congress has the authority to make laws like that, and the court decided that it does.
[1] Maybe not Clarence Thomas
Imagine believing these wacky old farts know anything at all about the internet.
