What is new or significant about the recent TikTok bill passing the House?
Why is there bipartisan support?
Doesn’t the President or Congress already have the authority to ban or punish foreign companies and their products?
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I do not give F#1: we should not be banning speech.
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And allow China, our greatest adversary, to dumb down our youth while enriching their children with educational content? Does this not pose an existential threat?
TikTok in China
Although they’re both owned by ByteDance, Douyin — China’s version of TikTok — offers a different version of the social media app that is unavailable to the rest of the world, especially for children.
“It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,” Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, and advocate for social media ethics, said of China’s approach to TikTok.
“If you’re under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos,” said Harris, according to “60 Minutes,” adding that children in China were limited to only 40 minutes a day on the app.
“There’s a survey of pre-teens in the U.S. and China asking, ‘what is the most aspirational career that you want to have?’ and in the U.S., the No. 1 was a social media influencer, and in China, the No. 1 was astronaut,” Harris said. “You allow those two societies to play out for a few generations and I can tell you what your world is going to look like.”
Free speech absolutists say we should trust in the “marketplace of ideas.” But does this principle hold when the “marketplace” is dishonest, manipulated, and controlled by an opposing force?
I would also suggest the “speech” content on TikTok is minimal. It’s definitely not a platform for “discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation,” i.e., dialectic.
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Exactly. And this is yet another reason why “conservatism” (shudder) is a failed ideology…actually, now that I think of it, conservatism probably was a psy-op.
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Quite right. I’m not on TikTok, but I’m told it’s mostly videos of scantily clad teenage girls shaking their tits and asses for the whole world to see. FREE SPEECH BABY!!! LOL!!! We’re winning the culture war! Americaaauuurrrghhh!!!
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I should say, however, I don’t think for a second that the people calling for a TikTok ban are doing so out of any deep concern for our youth…they’re probably just pissed that China is benefitting from corrupting our youth instead of themselves…afterall, they’re OUR resource to exploit, not China’s!! 
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The bill the House passed doesn’t ban TikTok immediately, rather it forces TikTok shareholders to divest and sell to someone the President approves.
Steve Mnuchin has expressed interest in purchasing TikTok.
I am not concerned about free speech or banning TikTok. I’m concerned about new legislation that gives the President or executive branch too much power to assign the label, foreign adversary.
Under this bill Biden can declare Elon Musk a foreign adversary and force him to sell X or Twitter.
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As they say….it isnt speech people LIKE which needs 1A protection.
Meanwhile, the PinkChinks are assiduously buying up actual territory I mean, y’know, SOIL, LAND! in our country—and nobody seems to care about THAT.
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It’s terrible for kids or anyone.
I heard all TikTok content is algorithmic generated
At least on Twitter and Facebook you can follow and see content from your friends
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I don’t think there are restrictions on foreigners buying land in USA 
except for a terror watch list or no fly list.
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Well, if you consider shaking T&A free speech, then we’ll have to agree to disagree. As others have pointed out, this TikTok situation has nothing to do with free speech. I bet that the amount of shaking T&A will be the same regardless of whoever winds up owning TikTok. Maybe I just discovered a new law of physics: Conservation of shaking T&A!! Yippee! 
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So the clique that rules China cares about the children of their country – the future of their country.
Meanwhile, the cliques that rule the West care about lining their own pockets. Yeah! “Democracy”!
A Man from Mars might think that it was rather foolish for the Political Class in the import-dependent, foreign investor-dependent, deeply indebted US to be (a) forcing the sale of a foreign-owned asset, presumably at less than market value, and (b) stealing the financial assets of one of the largest countries in the world. Those are actions with predictable consequences – such as the drying up of the supplies of imported real goods and imported financial investments on which the US depends. And the Man from Mars would be right, of course.
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I completely agree that this is a massive problem and is symptomatic of a kind of “freedom” gone to far. American is toast.
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A knife in the hands of a maniac can be used to murder a person, but in the hands of a skilled surgeon can be used to save a life. The problem with “conservatism” is that we try to find universal governing laws or maxims that can be applied at all times and in all situations. That might work for physics, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well when people are involved. The real world is messy and requires leaders with wisdom and discernment…something we don’t have in America.
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Fair point and I agree for the most part.
In the name of efficiency and parsimony, do we need more or redundant legislation?
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No, but at this point we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I’m sorry for being so pessimistic.
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Are we past the point of no return?
Have we hit the iceberg?
I think the answers are yes
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Yes. IMO, the only thing that can save us now is divine intervention.
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One has to ask oneself – Why would a Divine Being intervene? And especially why would that Divine Being intervene to help us, given what we have allowed our society to become?
The late John Walker sometimes speculated (with plausible reasons) that we are actually in a simulation. My guess is that the entity running the simulation is the equivalent of a nerdy high school student – who at this point is thinking there is no way this project is ever going to get an A. He may be thinking it is time to hit the Escape key and start over; maybe next time give the dinosaurs a bit more intelligence?
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I fully agree. I personally think that our society is going to crash and burn. The best we can hope for is to rebuild on the ashes…but when that time comes, I’m not sure we’ll be able to even do that (at least not for a very long time).
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