Suppose that is true. Then why are you ok with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or any other American oligarch wielding even more influence on US culture? When it comes down to it, it's just jingoism, isn't it? China man bad, America man good.
Not wanting authoritarian shitholes to have influence on people isn't really all that crazy of a stance, IMO, even if the world isn't perfect and shitheads like Zucc have similar influence.
If you don't like this, you are free to forgoe your citizenship and the benefits of the protection of the state to live statelessly.
It's not arbitrarily discriminatory. It is intentionally discriminatory. As a citizen of USA, Elon Musk has sworn total allegiance to the United States and abjures any loyalty to any previous sovereign. Now whether you agree or not on his interpretation that he is acting within the interests of the USA and it's constitution is the function of the political process, of which his allegiance is the prerequisite to participate in, and his acquisence to the monopoly on violence by the US Gov.
A Chinese oligarch living in China has not sworn his allegiance to the United States, his allegiance explicitly lies in total loyalty to the Sovereign of China, and by extension, the CCP. If the interests of China and USA were to be opposed, by definition the Chinese Oligarch will support the interests of China over the USA. And right now, the CCP and USA are very much in strategic competition. Nor does the USA have any ability to enforce on it's laws on someone living in China as opposed to USA.
Ever since the Code of Hammurabi justice has been based on the principle of equal treatment. That is, if you commit a crime the punishment should be metered out based on the crime and not your identity. The TikTok ban violates this principle because it discriminates based on identity. It makes no sense that it would be a greater crime for a Chinese businessman to own a social media network than it is for an American businessman.
In fact, if we look at the evidence, Musk has leveraged his control over Twitter to bolster neo-Nazi propaganda, silence his critics, and promote European right-wing parties. No such evidence exist for TikTok. If you are willing to overlook this evidence because "China man bad" then that indeed does make you a racist.
Ban 'em both for all I care, my whole point is that pretending as if the west is being evil or whatever for banning these obvious propaganda channels is absurd to me
please stop spreading lies.
The Romanian supreme court presented no evidence and instead cancelled the election results while the election were still going on (citizen living abroad were still voting)
It was just an excuse to stop something NATO did not like from happening and I am saying it as a very left leaning person, anti-fascist and anti-Putin.
What happened in Romania is a pure and simple coup d'etat with no military intervention.
Besides: if tik tok could really win elections in EU, it means our democracies aren't remotely as strong as we like to believe.
And if that's true, imagine what the US can do, having by far the largest budget for these kinds of operations in the entire World.
They had 10 parties and 4 independents that split the vote. In that particular election there were 6 right wing parties that collectively got 47% of the vote. The top 3 of those got 19.18%, 13.86%, and 8.79% of the vote.
The highest non-right party got 19.15% of the vote.
Georgescu's TikTok campaign just needed to get more than 19.15% of the vote to get to the top 2 round. He got 22.94%.
With the number of parties they have and the lack of any parties that come anywhere near majority support they really need to be using ranked choice voting or something similar.
replace Tik Tok with any other social network, that serve much more people, have much more penetration in Europe and have much larger budgets at their disposal and you will see how Tik Tok is a red herring in Romania.
It's just that democracy is good only when the "right" candidate wins.
In my Country the USA have controlled the results of the elections for 50 years, often relying on blackops, infiltrated intelligence, fabricated propaganda, reactionary movements, funding terrorism and in the process killing hundreds of innocent people.
It's nothing new to us in Europe.
I think you meant to say that it is not the job of any supreme court to cancel free elections without evidence.
I dare you to quote the documents that link the win of Georgescu to Russian propaganda.
I am not saying Georgescu wasn't helped by Russia, I am saying there is absolutely no evidence, and if an election can be bought with a couple hundred thousands dollars spent on tik tok, are you implying I could win the elections in Romania?
It is that weak the state of democracy there?
Imagine what the US could do there, having tens of billions at their disposal.
Again, it's not the job of any court anywhere in the world to present evidence
Allegedly.
It must be noted that
On 2 December, following a court-ordered recount of nearly nine million ballots, the Court validated the results of the first round of elections, certifying Călin Georgescu and Elena-Valerica Lasconi as the candidates for the second round.
The Court emphasized that annulment under Article 52(1) of Law No. 370/2004 requires clear evidence of fraud or irregularities capable of altering the assignment of mandates or candidate rankings, a threshold not met in this case
---
The votes were already re-counted and validate, moreover the court said there are no evidence of large frauds, not enough to justify an annulment, the same court that few days later actually annulled them. Isn't it suspicious to you?
And again: you're trying to move the goalpost here, the court doesn't have to provide evidence, they have to evaluate the evidence, and, by their words, *there is no evidence* of fraud.
In other news, Trump broke elections laws too (allegedly), are the US elections irregular?
In my country at every election turn there are accusations of breaking the election laws, and some irregularities are effectively happening, that does not invalidate the elections.
The will of the people is paramount and the supreme court is a servant of the people, it's not an absolute emperor nor it's their dad.
I would chose China, which is on the other side of the globe, has no military bases in my country (USA have 3! two of them with nuclear capabilities) and probably what they gather from me make little or no sense to them and can't really influence me the same way (not even close to it) content in my language, repeated day and night from the top government bodies to the least popular piece of media that then spread from mouth to mouth and becomes a discussion topic at family gatherings, can.
No way tik tok remotely has that power, no way China could really do anything like that, they can at most insinuate through the cracks already present in our contemporary societies hoping it will work, but banning tik tok will only widen them.
It's one of those situation where having a common enemy should reunite people with opposing views, but it's not evil aliens trying to conquer earth we are fighting, it's social content (mostly entertainment) that this time will take people with opposing views even more apart.
Sometimes, public opinion can be swayed very easily, by igniting the first spark with something outrageous; this is especially fruitful in times where the president of the United States openly opposes journalism, spreads lies, and generally fosters distrust and doubt. Lots of people are more inclined to believe a random TikTok than a professional journalist with decades of experience; what do you think were to happen if the Chinese government sees immediate value in the US government making a specific decision to their benefit, and one of the tools in their toolbox is playing a flurry of short videos to millions of American citizens, made to influence their understanding of an issue?
Most people will follow a reasonable opinion if it's the first time they're confronted with a complex situation. TiktTok is the perfect tool to exploit this, by delivering this opinion to absurdly narrow target groups, in a matter of seconds. Just because you don't notice this right now does neither mean the capability doesn't exist nor that it isn't already happening—which may be one of the reasons there is a bipartisan effort to pull through.
and that makes it different from IG, Facebook, X, YouTube (etc etc) how exactly?
With all due criticism, there are still checks and balances in place in the US that make it a very different place. We're not talking about an objectively "correct" decision here, but what is in the best interest of the USA and its allies, and that certainly makes a difference when it comes to foreign influence on the own populace.
All that being said: American Tech companies are dangerous in their own right, and nothing in my post was defending these either. But that doesn't make TikTok less of a threat.
This is actually false.
The USA are a Republic, not a democracy. By constitution.
> there are still checks and balances in place in the US
If you are rich, maybe it's true.
I give you that.
> but what is in the best interest of the USA and its allies
The US has no allies. My Country is a vassal of the US, we cannot decide anything geopolitically relevant on our own.
Can we for example exit NATO? Of course we can't! They got military bases here, with atomic missiles, recently updated.
We can't even negotiate the release of one of our own independently without the US giving the thumb up/down.
So, please, before saying that what they do it's in our best interest, please, ask us.
It's usually not, BTW.
> But that doesn't make TikTok less of a threat
My point: same threat should result in the same response to the threat.
We should ban any non European propaganda machine on our soil.
One simple example: we all know what went down with Cambridge Analytica and yet if you look for it, you won't find any reference to trials or convictions, because there was none! it had a massive influence on shifting political view of the people in UK and in the US, but you'll only find vague scolds to bad apples that unilaterally abused of one - with a clear conscience - social network, unknowingly to the management. Despite a ton of evidence of the contrary.
How can you explain that?
But that is not the talking point here. The current situation is the USA effectively banning TikTok in the USA to ensure national security.
The particular interests of other foreign countries are not being considered here, and I honestly don't quite understand why you think they should be? It's not like the USA is forcing this decision on everyone else.
> How can you explain that?
Now look; I'm not an American myself. I'm also appalled at what Meta and X are doing; it's all awful. But this particular decision? It's just not about us, and yet I can still try to understand why it was taken, and how I think it is the correct one, from the perspective of the USA.
the best oppressor is the one who's far.
That's why the US dominion over Europe seems better than the ones before, the USA are on the other side of an Ocean.
In my case, China influence is not an influence, I've studied China, I come from a long tradition of socialism and in particular "the Chinese way to socialism", I see them as a field of study but I think their way it's the new way of the World, capitalism the way it is implemented right now, especially in the US, it's not working anymore for the 99% (it's a meme, I know, but it's a fitting metaphor) and yet I don't buy their propaganda, because I despise propaganda, wherever it comes from.
OTOH the interest of China in me is minimal at best, they have bigger fishes to fry, while the declination of the various American social networks in each different western country (including mine) have a strong interest to sell me something, so they can make more money through ads. I am very much a good target for them and that bothers me much more.
> The current situation is the USA effectively banning TikTok in the USA to ensure national security.
And yet the POTUS himself promised to relieve the ban.
He didn't like tik tok, until he did.
And I know, you know, we all know, but don't say it, it's a move to piss of the democrats and the previous administration "with me, things will change" regardless if tik tok really is or it is not a threat to national security.
What does that say about the US actual political situation?
And what does China reaction says?
Singaporean corporations controlled by the Chinese government in China does not have FA rights.
America man friend of president.