• 1 Post
  • 42 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 14th, 2023
  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoTechnology@lemmy.ml•Signal has been blocked by Venezuela and RussiaEnglish
    222·
    1 month ago

    Asking the person you’re debating to look up your own citations is certainly one way to converse. But ok, let’s go for it.

    In Aug 2023, Forbes published an article describing the proposal of “unfettered access” you referred to:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/

    In June 2024, the Washington Post reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) turned down the proposal and includes some broad reporting as to why:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tiktok-offered-an-extraordinary-deal-the-u-s-government-took-a-pass/ar-BB1nfAcE

    The article isn’t very technical, but it mentions some interesting responsibility angles that the US wouldn’t want to back themselves into:

    • throwing open some, but not all, doors to server operations and source code creates a mountain of work for the government to inspect, which would be a workload nightmare
    • the US government’s deepest concerns seem to be about what data is going out (usage insights on the virtuous side and clipboard/mic/camera monitoring on the ultra shady side) and data coming in (bespoke content intended to influence US residents of China-aligned goals). Usage insights are relatively benign from national security perspective (especially when you can just mandate that people in important roles aren’t permitted to use it). Shady monitoring should be discoverable through app source code monitoring, which you can put the app platforms (Apple, Google, whoever else) on the hook for if they continue to insist on having walled app gardens (and if you trust them at all). The content shaping is harder to put your finger on though, since it’s super easy to abstract logic as far out as you need to avoid detection. “Here, look at these 50M lines of code that run stateside, and yeah, there are some API calls to stuff outside the sandbox. Is that such a big deal?” Spoiler: it is a big deal.
    • the US can’t hold Byte Dance accountable so long as it remains in China. Let’s say the US agreed to all this, spent all the effort to uncover some hidden shady activity that they don’t like (after an untold amount of time has passed). What then? They can’t legally go after Byte Dance’s foreign entity. The US can prosecute the US employees, but it’s totally possible to organize in such a way that leaves those domestic employees free from misdeeds, leaving prosecutors unable to enforce misdeeds fairly. It’d be a mess.

    The second article explains this somewhat, but I’m admittedly painting some conjecture on top regarding how a malicious actor could behave. I’ve got no evidence that Byte Dance is actually doing any of that.

    But going back to the “influence the public” angle, I’m struggling to see how different TikTok is versus NHK America (Japan’s American broadcasts) or RT (American media from the Russian standpoint) aside from being wildly more successful and popular. But I guess that’s all there is to it.

    I’d prefer our leaders also be transparent with us regarding their concerns about TikTok. The reductive “because China!!1!” argument is not compelling on its own.

  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetopolitics @lemmy.world•Kristi Noem’s dog-killing embodies the cruel phonyness of today’s RepublicansEnglish
    8110·
    4 months ago

    Move on from the dog-murder shit already. Rural and farm animals get killed by their owners. That’s how farms work. Grow the fuck up about it.

    Anyone with any practical experience in farming knows that the lives of animals used for service are cheap and are freely killed when they outlast their practical usefulness.

    This happens every day. And all the pearl-clutching over this only serves to alienate rural voters who are well-aware of this. And maybe they could be reached with appeals to livable wages, lack of access to viable health care or the autonomy of their own bodies. But framing a “yuck” campaign around the unpleasant truths of rural life drives an empathy wedge between that voter and pearl-clutching “animal loving” city dwellers who adore their dogs and cats and don’t give a second thought to where their hamburgers and chicken nuggets come from.

    This is not important. What matters is her legislative history. Working to amend the 14th amendment to define “personhood” as conception, loosening gun control, being an opponent of the Affordable Care Act, supporting Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban. These things matter.

  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetopolitics @lemmy.world•Colorado Ballot: Supreme Court Justices Appear Skeptical of Arguments to Kick Trump Off State BallotsEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    It doesn’t matter if Trump in reality is an insurrectionist

    That’s incorrect. It absolutely does matter if the candidate is an insurrectionist. It’s literally the only thing that matters.

    Read Section 3 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_3:_Disqualification_from_office_for_insurrection_or_rebellion ):

    No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

    The language is deliberately vague here. It doesn’t say a person needs to be convicted of anything, only that they committed the act. Colorado put forth an excellent case that the actions Trump engaged in count as insurrection.

    During oral arguments in the court today, the justices hand-waved this aside and changed the subject, asking “what if” questions about them allowing Trump’s removal, speculating that any state could easily gin-up boloney insurrection arguments against any candidate and have them yanked off the ballot. “What would we do then?” they kept asking.

    From home, I’m yelling “You do your fucking job.” Let the speculative bullshit charges be made, appealed, heard and rejected for the bullshit that they are, shaming the shit-slinging politicians for wasting the peoples’ time.