TikTok Ban Bill is Utterly Retarded and Useless, Here's Why

After US congressmen finished masturbating furiously in public en masse with blue and yellow Ukraine flags during a recent session, they signed and passed to Biden to sign the bill, apparently H.R. 231, to make distribution of the Tik Tok app illegal in the US market unless the company is divested from Chinese mainland ownership.

This is retarded and useless from several perspectives:

- If the ban were to take effect functionally, then the app can't appear in "play stores". However, the last version of that app will be around on devices that used the app. In Android you can run a common utility program that extracts an installed app into a ".APK" file. Which can be installed on any other device. Therefore, TikTok's app will hang around like a case of herpes for years after any ban until it just stops working with the main site. Also, you can always install an APK file on Android without recourse to the play store. Likely IOS has similar functions for Apple devices.

- Divestiture of TikTok from "Bytedance" is supposed to remove Chinese influence. However, even if this occurs, as long as any executives remain in the US subsidiary who are ethnic Chinese, then China can simply pressure them to follow orders from the CCP as always by leveraging threats on their families or their position within China. The CCP can gulag anyone it likes to force cooperation. So this is another layer of stupidity - the ban fails to address influence and frames it as only a legal corporate separation - really fucking Goddamned stupid.

The better way (steps):

- Force TikTok to invalidate all copies of their current privacy invading app installed on devices in the US. IE, make the US based apps no longer work with Tiktok. They could easily do so by changing the protocol for the app slightly from the server end.

- Simultaneously, rewrite their Tiktok app to remove privacy invading features. Use a clean room coding approach; and audit the code with a US based IT security team.

- The new TikTok app would be written to work with the new changed TikTok server protocols.

This approach

- makes the existing problematic Tik Tok app useless so most people will stop using it and will uninstall it. This avoids the software herpes issue we now face with orphaned TikTok apps.

- Puts a more trustable app in the hands of users.

- Removes reliance on Bytedance or Tiktok executives to conform, which is insane because as CCP influenced individuals they are inherently compromised and untrustworthy.

Two things people:

- Tell me why this can't work.

- Tell me why I am always the smartest person with a real solution to a problem that is overlooked by virtually everyone. I have not seen anyone publish an approach to the TikTok issue that has any level of reality to it.

Of course what you suggested will work, but they don't really want to ban it. They just want the appearance of doing so. IMO, they don't want to lose the user base because it would be less attractive to a US company that wants to buy TikTok.

If the government is allowed to shut down TikTok, what prevents them from also saying "Elon Musk is an agent for a foreign government. He must sell Twitter or shut it down."?

It sets a really bad precedent that government is able to seize private businesses.

The only reason people are dumb enough to fall for TikTok is that they're already educated to be ignorant and illogical.

The commies have won.

There would be such an uproar in the country if they actually ban TikTok in the US and do what Cornpop suggested. The best outcome would be for an different company to buy it. I read not too long ago that Rumble was interested. There are others too.

TikTok is really a treasure trove for the CCP to infiltrate and datamine as long as Bytedance owns it. That can't be allowed to go on so something has to change. Maybe it sets a precedent, which is really bad, so the only good solution is for someone to buy it.

I've never used TikTok, but I've seen plenty of videos from it. Its not something I'm interested in but the people on it just want to be seen and heard. They don't care about anything else. I'd never post anything on there myself knowing they have any connection with the CCP.

To recap:

Situation:

Ownership of TikTok is irrelevant. As long as there is any DNA of Chinese ownership or management I assume that Winnie the Pooh can get your data.

The security damage from TikTok is that its mobile app (used universally to access it) is a piece of spyware.

My recommended solution:

Force a replacement of the mobile app with a security audited "safe" app that does the same functional things (take and view videos, but without CCP spying on people's internal data.

Sunset the current app by making it useless, through a protocol change (I mean change the messages that the server sends to the app.)

If you did this, the old spyware TikTok app will basically evaporate from people's devices in favor of the safer reverse engineered app.

Congress isn't smart enough to understand an approach like this. They prefer non technical meat axe terminology such as ban, prohibit, law, legislate, force, deny.

I think Congress is retarded because legal remedies are not effective when the CCP basically doesn't follow any rule of law.

I doubt Bytedance would allow a rewrite of its app or a new app with security built in. They don't want to sell it either and say they will shut it down first. Supposedly the TikTok data doesn't reside on servers in China, but who knows. I don't trust them. As long as Bytedance has shadowy connections to the CCP its not good.

Building security into the app is good and that would work but maybe in the case of TikTok its not enough. TikTok spreads a lot of communist propaganda and suppresses other news aside from spying. Overall, it isn't a good situation and has to be revamped or banned. I don't think our Congress has the stones to ban it in the end. They're going to get a lot of flack if they do.

It's been stated in alt media that the Israeli and Jewish lobbies are driving the TikTok ban.

Building security into the app is good and that would work but maybe in the case of TikTok its not enough. TikTok spreads a lot of communist propaganda and suppresses other news aside from spying. Overall, it isn't a good situation and has to be revamped or banned.

Tiktok basically does the kind of spying that Google products do on Americans, so by definition TikTok is painted as bad.

But I suppose you're right - TikTok's culture itself is shit. It's lopsided to brainless meme videos (even stupider than the stuff I post here :-P ) and has lots of outright unwholesome content.

A lot of countries have banned TikTok at least from government devices because of the security threat. We have too. Some countries have banned it totally. I haven't read anything about Israeli/Jewish lobbies pushing for it, but clearly it's a problematic app.

https://www.breitbart.com/news/these-are-the-countries-where-tiktok-is-already-banned/

From the article:

"Those fears are reflected in the U.S. law, which is the culmination of long-held bipartisan fears in Washington that China’s communist leaders could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data, or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content. TikTok has long maintained that it doesn’t share data with the Chinese government and its CEO has taken a defiant stance, vowing to fight back."

TikTok is very popular even though its full of crap content. People have fun with it and they don't seem to care if their personal information is datamined by the CCP. Even though Google might spy they're not under the control of the CCP.

IMO it's being banned because of Israeli and Jewish pressure. These congressional assholes couldn't care less about actual national security.

That could be but why the pressure from the Jews? I would think our military and the intelligence community would want to ban it.

Are you serious? TikTok is a hotbed of woke antisemetic and pro-Palestine pro-Hamas bullshit. The Jewish lobbies wanted that shut down, period. They don't want the differing voices heard.

This was a bipartisan agreement, exactly like the Patriot Act.

The fuckwits in congress from both parties couldn't care less about child exploitation or people's financial data being hacked. National security was a distantly secondary motive because a bill has floated around with no definitive support for over a year.

You have proceeded to solve the "problem" without defining the problem.

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TikTok Ban Bill is Utterly Retarded and Useless, Here's Why (Public Board)

It Sets A Bad Precedent

they're already educated to be ignorant and illogical

It Sets A Bad Precedent

I recommended a technology solution instead of a legal ban

I recommended a technology solution instead of a legal ban

Tik Tok's doing for China what Google does for the US gov so it's bad

Tik Tok's doing for China what Google does for the US gov so it's bad

Tik Tok's doing for China what Google does for the US gov so it's bad

Tik Tok's doing for China what Google does for the US gov so it's bad

Reason for Tik Tok ban

Tell me why I am always the smartest person with a real solution to a problem