this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to Biden, who has already committed to signing it (www.theverge.com)
submitted 7 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 60 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Ew. I looked through the bill, and here are some parts I have issues with:

Main text

PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CON - TROLLED APPLICATIONS .—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:

(A) Providing services to distribute, main- tain, or update such foreign adversary con- trolled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

(B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.

So basically, the US can block any form of software (not just social media) distributed by an adversary county for pretty much reason, and it can block any company providing access to anything from an adversary.

Definition of "controlled by a foreign adversary"

(g) DEFINITIONS .—In this section:6 (1) CONTROLLED BY A FOREIGN ADVERSARY .— The term ‘‘controlled by a foreign adversary’’ means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is--

(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;

(B) an entity with respect to which a for- eign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indi- rectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or

(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).

The adversary countries are (defined in a separate US code):

  • N. Korea
  • China
  • Russia
  • Iran

So if you live in any of these or work for a company based in any of these, you're subject to the law.

foreign adversary company definition

(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLI - CATION .—The term ‘‘foreign adversary controlled application’’ means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—

(A) any of—

(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;

(ii) TikTok;

(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or

(iv) an entity owned or controlled, di- rectly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or

(B) a covered company that—

(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and

(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—

It specifically calls out TikTok and ByteDance, but it also allows the President to denote any other entity in one of those countries as a significant threat.

So here are my issues:

  • I, as a US citizen, can't choose to distribute software produced by an adversary as noted officially by the US government - this is a limitation on my first amendment protections, and I think this applies to FOSS if the original author is from one of those countries
  • the barrier to what counts is relatively low - just living in an adversary country or working for a company based on an adversary country seems to don't
  • barrier to a "covered company" is relatively low and probably easy to manipulate - basically needs 1M active users (not even US users), which the CIA could totally generate if needed

So I think the bill is way too broad (lots of "or"s), and I'm worried it could allow the government to ban competition with US company competitors. It's not as bad as I feared, but I still think it's harmful.

Anyway, thoughts?

[–] Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 30 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Isn't Nginx written by a Russian? So is it now banned in the US? What other software has been effected by this legislation?

[–] porksoda@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hah, well time to tell our CEO I'm shutting down our prod servers.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry an American will be available to own it instead! And there won't be any problems because we're the best!

[–] jecht360@lemmy.world -3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You missed the /s in your comment.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

no comment needs an /s

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I shouldn't need one for that. But in the same vein...

I don't know what you're talking about, it's impossible for the world's only bastion of freedom to do anything wrong! We should just have the president and do away with things like courts!

[–] el_abuelo@lemmy.ml -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Woops! You forgot the /s again

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

Dang it. I'll remember one of these days.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 9 points 7 months ago

No, but it could be. The President would need to start the process and give them 270 days to relocate to somewhere that's not Russia or sell to a non-Russian company or whatever.

[–] exanime@lemmy.today 4 points 7 months ago

Tetris....

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thoughts? Someone turned a troll farm loose on this one. We've been getting ratioed for weeks saying this and now all the shills screaming that we must support the CCP and hate our own country because it's an obvious national security measure are gone. Ones that suspiciously needed the Constitution explained to them at the most basic level.

We got played by the people that are supposed to represent us.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's not that bad, but I do think it's bad, and I outlined why. But my concerns aren't with whether TikTok is good or bad (I think it's bad, hence why I don't use it), I'm more concerned with granting the federal government even more power with vaguely written laws.

The CCP can burn to the ground as far as I care.

[–] Maltese_Liquor@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure it would cover open source software since it seems to be more concerned with data than the actual code. If that open source software is being used by a company controlled by a foreign adversary then that would probably apply but if it's open source software created by a foreign adversary but being used by a US company I don't think that would.

The actual wording of the bill seems pretty vague so I could be wrong and they might be able to apply it just to software but that would kind of to against the entire option B that they're currently giving ByteDance where they can keep Tik Tok running by selling it to an American company.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 7 months ago

literally all you would have to do for OSS is just fork it to someone living in america, and develop it from there.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago

The actual wording of the bill seems pretty vague

And that's the issue. Yeah, it probably won't apply to FOSS today, but times change and maybe it will in 10+ years.

[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

"Hello, we are ClickClock, a totally different (😉😉😉) social media company hoping to fill the void of that one social media company that recently went under. As a matter of fact, with their recent layoffs we were even able to hire much of their talent and stuff. But totally different!"

That's about how trivial it would be to get around this if the legislation was too specific

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

Sure, and the more general it is, the more likely the government can get away with shady stuff, like the NSA did with the FISA rubber stamp courts.

This doesn't seem nearly as bad as that, but I also don't think the stakes are all that high if they make things too specific.

[–] Razzazzika@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't that mean games like Genshin Impact and Honkai by Chinese companies like HoYo will be banned then too in the states?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

No, but it probably could be. I think Fortnite also qualifies.

The bill only allows the federal government to require companies to sell or be banned, it doesn't ban anything on its own.