Congress

The Growing Momentum of the TikTok Ban: A Tale of Frustration and Renewed Inspiration for Content Creators

Tiktok Ban 2 1
Creators are frustrated but energized as TikTok ban gains momentum TikTok creators and their followers want their concerns taken seriously — and plan to push backThe bill that could ban TikTok took one step closer to becoming a law on Wednesday. Some lawmakers’ offices reported that they were being overloaded with calls from angry TikTok users, a situation that was parodied by late night host Stephen Colbert. “This time around is just so going much faster within the legislative process,” Jules Terpak, a gen Z tech commentator on TikTok, told TechCrunch. Though there is no evidence of the CCP spying on TikTok, there has been evidence of ByteDance accessing TikTok data without authorization. My understanding of the push to ban TikTok pic.twitter.com/KMXtWuFbS5 — Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) March 13, 2024Phillips has been frustrated by condescending attitudes toward TikTokers.

The Proposed TikTok Ban: An Update on Congress’ Decision

Tiktok Ban 1
TikTok ban: What’s going on with the proposed bill in Congress Congress could force TikTok to part with its Chinese parent companyTikTok faces an uncertain fate in the U.S. once again. The bill, which many of its detractors reasonably describe as a “ban,” would force ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months for the app to continue operating here. The campaign to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. company originated with an executive order during the Trump administration. Trump’s threats against the company culminated in a plan to force TikTok to sell its U.S. operations to Oracle in late 2020. We may learn more next week if senators begin weighing in on the prospect of creating their own version of the House bill.

Four Lessons from Congressional Testimonies of US Spymasters

Wray Burns Haines Intelligence Hearing
Four things we learned when US spy chiefs testified to Congress US intelligence leaders gave their most recent — and frank — assessment of global cyber threatsCyberattacks, regional conflict, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, commercial spyware, AI, misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and TikTok. These are just some of the top perceived threats that the United States faces, according to the U.S. government’s intelligence agency’s latest global risk assessment. Some cybersecurity experts have called on governments to outright ban ransom payments as necessary to stop hackers profiteering from cybercrime. Given how much data we share from our phone apps (which many don’t give a second thought), U.S. spy agencies are simply buying up vast troves of Americans’ commercially available location data and internet traffic from the data brokers. In other words, U.S. spy agencies can keep buying data on Americans that is readily available for purchase until Congress puts a stop to the practice — even if the root of the problem is that data brokers shouldn’t have our data to begin with.

For You will be Taken Over by TikTok: Ban Urged

Tiktok Us Flag
When some American users opened TikTok on Thursday morning, they were met with a full-screen message encouraging them to call Congress and say no to a TikTok ban. “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”Below the message, users can click a red “call now” button. Last year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress for five hours, addressing lawmakers’ concerns about Chinese authorities accessing American data (TikTok, an American company, is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company). Chew has repeatedly stated that TikTok and ByteDance are not conduits for the Chinese government. The bill’s sponsors are urging TikTok to sever its ties with ByteDance to avoid this fate, or else it could lose its 170 million American users.

Scenario Two: AI Expectations Squashed as House Unveils Aimless Task Force

Capitol Congress Hearing Government Techcrunch Bryce Durbin
The House of Representatives has founded a Task Force on artificial intelligence that will “ensure America continues leading in this strategic area,” as Speaker Mike Johnson put it. “But we started this task force!” Yes, and the E.U. has had their task force working on this subject since the pandemic days. The announcement of the task force kept expectations low, with no timeline or deliverables that voters or watchdogs can hold them to. Perhaps this task force is Congress’s admission that during such a tumultuous times, and lacking any real insight into an issue, all they can do is say “we’ll look into it.”