It was never about data harvesting. They think its fine when American companies infringe on our privacy (facebook/meta). It was about being able to control the narrative.
Now that the TikTok ban has been signed into law, I felt obligated to give my two cents.
This is nothing less than a crystal clear infringement on our right to free speech. Through TikTok, the flaws within the American government have been revealed to millions of young people across the country, especially after October 7th. When you have a large group of people, especially a group as influential as the next generation, all collectively speaking out against an inherently corrupt institution, the first thing that institution would need to do to preserve itself is take away the platform on which that group speaks, and that is exactly what this ban will do. The US government is cracking down on tiktok not just because it wants to silence the youth of America, but because it needs to in order to preserve its authority.
But why does this ban apply to tiktok specifically??? If they want to silence opposition, why not get rid of social media as a whole???
Here’s the thing, they don’t even need to do that. X and Meta are run by corporate billionaires, both of which are on the same side as the US government and have already been censoring their platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and X are already on their side in this, so why ban them when you can focus on the outlier? The foreign run company that isn’t a slave to the federal government? And that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re banning TikTok because we have nowhere else to run.
Additionally, the vast majority of Americans were against this bill, and yet it still made it through congress, and got signed by the president. There is nothing that could show us that the federal government’s interests have moved beyond those of the people’s more clearly than this. They do not care. Our senators , our representatives, our president, none of them care about the people anymore, and so long as this system of government exists, they never will, which is why nothing in America, nothing in the world will change unless we can put aside the imaginary differences we’ve set up for ourselves and come together against the collective enemy of the capitalist system.
In the grip of oppression, a Palestinian child is detained for daring to dream of freedom of his own land, while oceans away, an American student is shackled for standing in solidarity with Palestinians and against the Israeli occupation.
From occupied Palestinian streets to the land of the free, voices for justice are silenced by those wielding the same coin of terror—a terror called Zionism.
If you wanna protect AO3 or character ai. Or Wattpad. Or Tumblr. Or discord. Or even the right for undocumented people and minors to use the fucking Internet reblog this I swear to God. Reblog this and reblog as many KOSA posts as you can go on their website and contact your Representatives. Do it. Do it. Do it.
Stop KOSA. KOSA just got passed through the House and More organizations even Twitter and Snapchat. Social media companies it aims to delete are coming out in support of it. This content creator has been covering KOSA for a long time. If you remember when AO3 was down how everyone freaked out. KOSA could take AO3 off the Internet. Could remove queer content online. The ACLU opposes it. It's unconstitutional call your Senators. Call your Representatives. Call everyone you can in power and tell them to oppose this bill. Sign petitions follow the link in that creators bio. Go to bad Internet Bills dot com and get call script or fax script for it. Contact the ACLU about suing states that support KOSA. We can still fight. End KOSA protect online safety!
Fifteen government departments have been monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling “secret files” in order to block them from speaking at public events, the Observer can reveal.
Under the guidelines issued in each department, including the departments of health, culture, media and sport, and environment, food and rural affairs, officials are advised to check experts’ Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. They are also told to conduct Google searches on those individuals, using specific terms such as “criticism of government or prime minister”.
The guidelines are designed to prevent anyone who has criticised the government in the previous three to five years from speaking at government-organised conferences and other events.
[...]
These hidden checks are unlawful, running contrary to data protection laws and potentially breaching equality and human rights legislation.
Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, was disinvited in April from giving a keynote speech at a UK defence conference after officials found social media posts criticising Tory ministers and government immigration policy. He told the Observer this weekend that he knows of 12 others who have uncovered evidence of similar government blacklisting, most of whom are frightened of speaking out. But he said far more will be unaware they ever failed secret vetting.
He said: “The full extent of this is shocking and probably not fully known. I was lucky enough to be given clearcut, obvious evidence. It’s truly awful.”