TikTok Confirms It Offered US Government a 'Kill Switch' (bbc.com) 36
TikTok revealed it offered the U.S. government a "kill switch" in 2022 to address data protection and national security concerns, allowing the government to shut down the platform if it violated certain rules. The disclosure was made as it began its legal fight against legislation that will require ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban. The BBC reports: "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," they argued in their legal submission. They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the "kill switch" offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go.
TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the "explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government's sole discretion" if it did not follow certain rules. A draft "National Security Agreement", proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data. The "kill switch" could have been triggered by the government if it broke this agreement, it claimed.
In a letter - first reported by the Washington Post - addressed to the US Department of Justice, TikTok's lawyer alleges that the government "ceased any substantive negotiations" after the proposal of the new rules. The letter, dated 1 April 2024, says the US government ignored requests to meet for further negotiations. It also alleges the government did not respond to TikTok's invitation to "visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparency Center in Maryland." Further reading: TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking Law
TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the "explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government's sole discretion" if it did not follow certain rules. A draft "National Security Agreement", proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data. The "kill switch" could have been triggered by the government if it broke this agreement, it claimed.
In a letter - first reported by the Washington Post - addressed to the US Department of Justice, TikTok's lawyer alleges that the government "ceased any substantive negotiations" after the proposal of the new rules. The letter, dated 1 April 2024, says the US government ignored requests to meet for further negotiations. It also alleges the government did not respond to TikTok's invitation to "visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparency Center in Maryland." Further reading: TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking Law
Alright already (Score:2, Informative)
Just ban this shit outright already and move on. Other countries have done it and it isn't missed. IT"S EVEN BANNED IN ITS HOME COUNTRY!
Re: (Score:3)
censored or promoted
Which is it?
You can check for censorship fairly easily, post something, ask someone else if they can find it?
If you want to show up at a certain point in a search that's an entirely different story.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say it was good or bad, only that they were different. It's an argument itself if de-prioritization is censorship at all, I think that's your case to make. If you post something to social media and the people who follow you can see it anyone you link it to can see it how have you been censored?
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The 1800's analogy of depriorization is if you're allowed to say something but forbidden to publish it in a newspaper. It better not be done by the government, the publishing company however is allowed to, but maybe they shouldn't that's for their audience to decide.
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That's a bad comparison. Printing presses could decide not to print anything their neighbor wanted because the owner had a fallout with them.
No one was prevented from opening their own printing presses and passing out papers to those who wanted to see it. Owning a press did not give you a right to the town square.
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There are numerous reports of people on pre-Musk Twitter and FB who were following people or in groups, etc, who were suddenly not following those people or didn't get the weekly posts from them, etc, and only found them again by manually searching for them.
Must be a bug, especially since it only seemed to happen to people of a particularly ideological leaning.
Re: (Score:2)
censored or promoted
Which is it?
It's both. Some content is censored, while other content is promoted. Can you not understand that simple concept?
Land of the free (Score:1)
It's abundantly clear by now that if the US Federal government doesn't fully control what a service shows people, it's not permitted to operate here. The blob is a hostile foreign entity that has taken over our union.
Re: Land of the free (Score:2)
It's funny how people who pride themselves on not believing the MSM narrative accept the framing and purported facts of a huge, Totalitarian-owned social media PR department.
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That's a brainlet take. Twitter was demonstrably the propaganda wing of the Federal government and establishment Democrat blob, with receipts. Musk bought it and massively pissed them off by fucking with their apparatus, and ever since the media has changed him from a patron saint to a public enemy.
Have you not paid any attention to the email releases and FOIA requests demonstrating the state department's deep control over American's speech via Twitter "trust and safety" enforcement?
Re: Land of the free (Score:2)
Ok, so now we agree that the Feds don't "dutifully control" Twitter. Keep pulling on that thread (no pun intended ).
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Are their actions now consistent with an entity that's trying to shut down Twitter, or let it operate? And previously?
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I never said dutifully control. Do you even know what you're replying to?
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More like once his government subsidies dried up Musk quit pretending to be a progressive selling electric vehicles to the progressive crowd. He shot off his mouth when he told twitter advertisers to "go fuck themselves" and now he's saying he really didn't mean it and wants them back. https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-... [gizmodo.com]
Tesla sales are dropping https://www.cbsnews.com/news/e... [cbsnews.com] as it turns out his new conservative friends think EVs are for pussies and commies. Everyone laughs at the Cybertruck and the F-150 L
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I saw a real, live Cybertruck "in the wild" for the first time earlier this week. Those things really are butt-ugly!
And they're much smaller than I expected... I can't imagine anyone who owns a F-150 or RAM sizing down to something like that. It seemed more comparable to those tiny Chevy LUV types that were around back in the 70s and 80s.
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Yeah, I bought my EV pickup truck for the 0-60, said no one, ever.
People who need pickup trucks, get them for their hauling and towing capacity. Everyone else is a poser. Like the mind of people who even know, much less worry about their 0-60 pickup truck times.
Other vehicles purchased for 0-60 times: 18 wheelers, fire trucks, farm tractors, and steam rollers.
Only a dumbass buys a car for 0-60, even sports cars. There's no much more going on in a car that's more important.
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I can't even get the full 0-60 out of my 2000 Nissan Quest minivan, there's always some asshole in a BMW or something driving slow and clogging up the lane! It's a freeway onramp, come on, lets get up to speed before we get there so we can merge! Bleepin' bleep!
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Yep, bad drivers drive every vehicle type.
What I found interesting after moving from California to Florida is seeing bad driving is apparently cultural.
In California the drivers were slow, oblivious, rude, would intentionally block you if you hit your signals and other passive aggressive stupid shit. Countless low speed collisions that were easily avoided by paying attention. I got tapped at least once every third year and barely avoided a hit several times a year by emergency dodging some fool.
In Florida
systemd-anonymousd is a retarded moron (Score:2)
It hears "TikTok offered U.S. government a "kill switch" to shut it down if certain rules broken" - which was clearly rejected by US government.
From that it concludes that "if the US Federal government doesn't fully control what a service shows people, it's not permitted to operate here".
It is a fucking retarded moron.
Though more likely a Russian troll account. A human with a 6 million plus UID? Who is it kidding?
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Angy boomer following me around. Post history full of delusional impotent rage like "we should hunt the rich for sport," calling people cunts for having different opinions, and having bouts of caps lock rage, like "And guess what's influenced by droughts? And guess what gets shot down when it gets really hot everywhere - because there's no way to cool it? THAT'S RIGHT! YOUR STUPID FAT ASS! CAUSE YOU GET A HEART ATTACK FROM HEAT STROKE!"
Who are you talking to? What do you think you're doing here? You're sad
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I guess you don't understand that American citizens are within America?
I said: "the state department's deep control over American's speech via Twitter 'trust and safety' enforcement."
A kill switch is useless... (Score:2)
Kill Switch = Ban (Score:1)
There really isn't much standing in court.
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It was a stupid idea and shows TT's lack of understanding of the US regulatory environment. The US government does not want to control the private sector. Not because of "Communism" or anything like that. The Senators, Representatives, etc etc... none of them want any decisions to come back to them. The US govt doesn't want to pay for or get sued for decisions and potential favoritisms from their Control, actioned upon or not. Also, the industry doesn't support it. The Industry just wants each player
Undergods (Score:1)
are only worried that their children are using an atheist app.
It's just a phase some adults go through.
what if the kill switch had granularity? (Score:2)
Or maybe any story that mentioned some volatile phrase or personality?
Would be handy to catch annoying phrases, for example "32 felony convictions".
Maybe the USA could setup a whole department of people to read thru social media and catch and kill bad stuff by bad people.
You gotta hand it to software with Chinese characteristics as a business model.
It's like a younger better looking Facebook. Ooohh..
No wonder the Yanks want to get the
Nope. Still a Chinese owned info-hoovering tool. (Score:1)
Sorry.
At some point we just need to tell these fuckers "No".
wah wah (Score:2)
Seriously is anybody believing anything they said at this point? They've been caught lying to congress so many times at this point they probably are telling the truth sometimes because what they say is the last thing anyone will believe.
A government kill switch would be censorship (Score:2)
Here's a red button (Score:2)
I totally promise that if I start using my service as part of a military attack on you, pressing that button will stop me! I thousand-promise! I... I... I pinky swear~!