Summary

Donald Trump submitted a Supreme Court filing opposing a TikTok ban, citing his “dealmaking expertise” and promising to resolve national security concerns.

The brief advocates delaying the case to allow Trump to address it politically.

Legal experts criticized the filing for being overly self-promotional and unprecedented, with some mistaking it for satire.

Critics noted its unusual tone and highlighted the involvement of Trump’s potential solicitor general pick, D. John Sauer, in drafting the document.

The case concerns TikTok’s alleged violations of privacy laws and ties to China.

  • thericofactor@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    All the while in China TikTok is forbidden. They have a Chinese version called Douyin, and it limits the content to educational instead of entertainment and the time spent to maximum 2 hours for people under 18.

    What does it tell you that the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people from the influence of TikTok?

    It’s simply a propaganda tool to influence people and it keeps them addicted using an algorithm. It’s a highly specialized psy ops tool. It makes the world dumber and uses the same addictiveness to educate the Chinese at the same time.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      59 minutes ago

      Oh yeah my brother loves his TikTok and so does my dad. I watched my brother he will just endlessly scroll and watch the dumbest shit you can imagine. That not even all the alt right shit he consumes on there. Hell I had to do a quick google search to prove a post as fake. Some rando says the tiger king was pardon or Biden was rounding up trump supporters and my brother bought it. I prove both post wrong and tried to explain that it was a propaganda tool to keep him stupid and in the dark. Still uses it.

    • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      What does it tell you that the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people from the influence of TikTok?

      Absolutely nothing?

      This is a country that has incredibly authoritarian laws on the books regarding the internet because it doesn’t want it’s people reading “”“”“western propaganda”“”", why would we assume it’s reason for continuing that behaviour isn’t the same as it’s always been: bullshit

      • thericofactor@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        It tells me that TikTok is used to brainwash people and that they don’t want their own weapon used against them.

        And I agree other social media does the same. Maybe a little less obvious. The Chinese authoritarian government can obviously protect their own from this much more effectively.

        In America blocking an app like TikTok is considered taking away the freedom of people to choose and express themselves. Especially after getting a large part of the population addicted to the crappy content.

        China is using the freedom of the west against them.

            • theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works
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              19 hours ago

              What argument can be made against actual schizophrenic ramblings with absolutely no basis in reality? How can one start to address the finer points of an argument made during a psychotic break?

              • thericofactor@sh.itjust.works
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                19 hours ago

                What part of the argument has no basis in reality?

                These are the facts:

                • China has their own version of TikTok, for which they control much of the nature of the content.
                • this alternative app is only meant for the Chinese population and limits usage, so young people are less prone to waste a lot of time on it.
                • meanwhile the actual TikTok app features tons of misinformation and is made to be highly addictive
                • it is also quite well-known that TikTok collects most user information of pretty much all social media apps.
                • we know nothing about the underlying algorithms, but it’s pretty safe to assume the Chinese government doesn’t have our best interest in mind.

                My conclusion is that it’s not unlikely TikTok is used at least to some degree, by the Chinese as a tool for spying, and to spread propaganda to further their own agenda.

                While the Chinese version is somewhat educational, in the west it spreads misinformation, it has people waste time doing dumb ass dances and playback songs. It effectively makes people stupid.

                Now please enlighten me and show me my logical fallacy.

    • hark@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      If that’s sufficient for a ban, then most or all the rest of social and mass media would qualify as well.

      • thericofactor@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Tell me what other social media use separate versions and time limits between countries?

        But I agree that other social media should be regarded critically as well. It’s just that china takes a very obvious approach trying to shield their own people from the obviously effective propaganda machine they created.

        • hark@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I don’t know about time limits, but social media does get censored on a per-country basis depending on the government of each country. Also, each person has their own tailored content based on the algorithm that it might as well be considered a different version.

          We could just as easily mandate restrictions on data or require timers for children on social media instead of doing a full ban. Note that the US was fine with keeping tiktok if they sold to an American company. Something tells me the brain rot would not be lessened and no special timer would be implemented by the new ownership if it were to have gone through.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I think part of the argument here is the very asymmetric nature of Chinese social media that makes their intentions rather obvious. They banned almost every foreign website/app or heavily restricted them like almost no other country did. They aren’t even allowing their own apps when they’re not primarily made for domestic use. It’s a tool to control people and that’s how the Chinese government uses it. It’s not just another corporation trying to turn a profit by wasting our time with nonsense and only destroying democracy as a byproduct like Facebook. Destroying Democracy is the point of TikTok as we’re seeing all around the world where it aggressively pushes anti-democratic content.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      it limits the content to educational instead of entertainment and the time spent to maximum 2 hours for people under 18

      That sounds WAY too nanny state restrictive to me and I’m SCANDINAVIAN!

      the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people

      Good one 😆

      It’s simply a propaganda tool to influence people and it keeps them addicted using an algorithm. It’s a highly specialized psy ops tool. It makes the world dumber

      Same has been truthfully said about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The behavior of Meta and Musk aren’t any better and your data isn’t any more safe from ending up in the hands of hostile and/or totalitarian governments such as those of India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Israel.

      The REAL reason why politician want to ban Tiktok is that it’s the only serious competitor to the other radicalization machines whose parent companies and key people “just happen to” donate a lot more money to those same politicians than ByteDance does. The official reasons are just a smoke screen.

      I’d be fine with it if they were actually honest about it and banned the aforementioned American competitors too, though. Short of that, banning Tiktok doesn’t really solve any problems without exacerbating others.

      Oh, and for all its censorship on behalf of the Chinese government, Tiktok is also the only major social media platform that doesn’t heavily censor legitimate protest against the fascist apartheid regime of Israel.

      I’m sure that the push has NOTHING to do with the fact that most if not all of the politicians in favor are taking a ton of blood money from AIPAC and other de facto Israeli government entities badly disguised as American nonprofits either! 🙄

    • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Douyin content is very similar to TikTok content. There are many popular douyin creators whose content gets copied to TikTok. There’s loads of makeup, cosplay, cooking, skit, DIY, etc. Mukbang style content is very popular there as well. Their makeup and fashion content, like on TikTok, is sponsored by huge international brands like Mac and Gucci and others along those lines. Also super popular is pet content, like people who run cat shelters and dog walkers and stuff. There is also no age verification to use the app unless you want to post or comment yourself, and there is no time limit to use it. Some TikTok creators get reposted to douyin as well, but the overwhelming majority of people in china do not speak English, and to post on it, you need to be a citizen of China. Not that there aren’t ways around it, but it’s harder than it’s worth.

      I get that you’re paranoid about Chinese international political interference, rightfully so in some ways. But this is just blatant lies and fear mongering. I’ve used the app extensively myself to follow some makeup content creators from China. It’s functionally identical to TikTok. Censorship does exist, but it’s based around specific events, mostly from what i can tell. I don’t use to find political content, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they censored content based on stuff like the Honk Kong protests. Propaganda is also on there, most likely, but I never encounter it in my feed.