This is a reductive and misleading analysis. The US has already prohibited foreign entities from holding broadcast/common carrier licenses, or from owning significant chunks of equity in holders of those licenses [1]. It should be kind of obvious why a country would not want their biggest media providers to be foreign-owned.
You could argue that if the US wants to update the 1934 telecommunications act for the 21st century, it should do so more thoughtfully and comprehensively (I would agree). But the TikTok ban, however poorly written or haphazardly targeted, is fairly in line with a legal doctrine that has been commonly known and accepted for 90 years.
[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli...
But you don't need a license to put something on the internet. And Americans don't want everything on the Internet to be regulated and censored the way TV and radio are.
It IS wrong for them to determine what we can and can't be influenced by. By saying bad countries "influencing" us is bad for democracy, they are saying democracy isn't really up to us, the voters, it's up to them. And I'll never accept that.
Whether you _should_ need a license to distribute a media app in the US under certain conditions, and whether “Americans” (which ones?) really do want no limits on who controls their media, is the correct debate to be having. The person I was responding to believed the issue to be “US demands local ownership of TikTok just because it's successful and valuable” which is clearly wrong.
The end result of your line of thought isn't the return of TikTok, it's the creation of an internet hosting licensing scheme in the US.
Tt's obvious why the state would not want it. It's not obvious why "country" would not want it.
By extension focussing on the negative impact on an individual is very small, but the overall impact on society and culture is massive (which in turn impacts individuals).
Taking that a step further I think you can argue there is some tragedy of the commons occurring which indicates govt. regulation should exist. Govt regulating media is tough, but as the US showing here, a rule getting rid of foreign actors might be a good idea for many countries.
0. The neo-Nazis in question are the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The AfD has many high-ranking members with neo-Nazi pasts, such as the leader of the party in the state of Thüringen, Björn Höcke, who used to write for a neo-Nazi publication under a pseudonym, "Landolf Ladig" (remind you of any other name?). This guy now runs the AfD in the state of Thüringen, the state where the AfD performs the best, electorally (33%, making them the largest party in the state). There are many other high-ranking AfD members with similar neo-Nazi pasts and affiliations. Then there are those who merely go on and on about immigrants, foreigners, minorities, but who are smart enough not to have explicitly associated themselves with open neo-Nazis. Needless to say, the fact that this sort of party is reaching 33% in some parts of the country is hugely concerning in Germany.
The next round of regulations, NIS2 for example, is starting to get up steam. This year we also have the Digital Services Act. Time will tell if US media platforms continue to develop EU-versions, and in what forms, or if they give up.
In term of national security I would be a bit more afraid of Microsoft 365 than Meta.
Maybe its time to go back to a simpler MySpace or FriendsReunited style setup for actual social media. The problem is theres not much money in that, nor are people likely to visit as regularly.
Digital borders should only be open and allow free traffic between allies.
edit: since it won't let me reply to posters under here. What I mean is in stopping foreign propaganda and interference. Elon Musk can't spend hundreds of millions to influence e.g. the Chinese people in ways that benefit the US.
I don't think many people separate out the "incoming" and "outgoing" aspects of firewalls, and conflate firewalls with censorship. Most of the countries that employ firewalls do both, censor as well as protect. But it's not a requirement that you must censor your own people in order to stop foreign agents interfering in your society.
This is quite literally what banning TikTok is about. Suddenly the US has decided that they don't like it when other countries do to them what the US routinely does to others.
Oh, how far we have fallen.
> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
US owns most of the social networks, video streaming platforms and most of the classic media (tv,...).
The diffrence is, that countries like US (and many EU countries) point a finger at china/russia and accuse them of censorship, claim themselves to be free, and then do the same censorship that russia/china do.
And yet many countries have no objection with letting their citizens use US FAANG services?
In your view:
a) what is a megacorp (criteria), and
b) why do you think they should be destroyed?
For reference, the largest 15 companies in the world, by:
- Market cap are: Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Saudi Aramco, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, TSMC, Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart, JPMorgan, Eli Lilly, Visa
- by # of employees: Walmart, Amazon, Foxconn, Accenture, VW, Tata, DHL, BYD, Compass, Jingdong, UPS, Gazprom, Home Depot, JD Logistics, Agricultural Bank of China.
- by earnings: Saudi Aramco, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, NVIDIA, JP Morgan Chase, Meta, Amazon, ICBC, China Construction Bank, China Pacific Insurance, Exxon Mobil, Agricultural Bank of China, Toyota
B)
- Small business should be the driving force in the economy. They are the wellspring of competition and the bastion of the middle class.
- Megacorporations seek to destroy the ability for small businesses to compete with them, leaving buyout or vassalage as their only possible endgame. This shuts down true competitive threats to the megacorporations' dominance. They are trying to pull up the ladder behind them.
- A company should not be so large it can afford to ignore its customers.
- A company should not be so large that it can treat regulatory fines as merely a cost of doing business.
- A company should not be so large that it gets to write the laws and regulations.
- The Monopoly standard is not strict enough. Cartel-like oligopolies cooperate on the important political issues while maintaining a facade of competition.
- Our political systems are not equipped to handle the centralization of such large amounts of wealth. While the economy may not be a zero-sum game, power is, and power follows money.
- ADDED: A company must not be too big to fail.
- ANOTHER: A company should not be so large it can use loss-leaders to bully its way into other markets.
E.g. back to Meta, etc: they scraped everything, everywhere for a long time, and it was a big factor that lead to their rise. Now they seek to control all the data in their fiefdom, and use the power of the legal system to enforce EULAs to prevent others from doing the same.
Why? Because economic entities with market power underproduce, overcharge, and fail to innovate and meet their customers' needs. They cause deadweight losses through their inefficiencies. And an excess of concentrated power is just plain scary, whether an individual, a corporation, or a government wields it.
Of course, reducing some of the edge of market power at scale will result in a smaller maximum company size.
Europe may be an exception, but that is what you get when the US is your suzerain.
Hopefully the next 4 years help change that.
It’s not always a slippery slope. And China's use of soft power via strict governmental control of its corporations isn’t an imaginary boogeyman.
> (d) The Secretary of Commerce shall evaluate on a continuing basis trans- actions involving connected software applications that may pose an undue risk of sabotage or subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, produc- tion, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of information and communications technology or services in the United States; pose an undue risk of catastrophic effects on the security or resiliency of the critical infra- structure or digital economy of the United States; or otherwise pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons. Based on the evaluation, the Secretary of Commerce shall take appropriate action in accordance with Executive Order 13873 and its implementing regulations.
This was a bill only against China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran. None of whom allow particularly free access to the internet.
For example the Facebook article on "Censorship of Facebook" lists all of those countries as well as Myanmar, Turkmenistan, and Uganda as the only countries that "continually ban access" to facebook.
You're talking out of ignorance. The European Commission has been putting together initiatives to allow European cloud providers to emerge as credible alternatives to the FANGs in terms of providing infrastructure.
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-pl...