Just because presidential candidates are on the popular application, everyone should know by now that this application does pose a problem.
The problem is, and has been said publicly, that this application logs everything you do with the app and even without the app.
Nobody has given us clear answers on why the app asks to read our text messages, listen to everything we do, and even have access to all our photos if that is what the application does.
Presenting arguments that an outright ban violates free speech protections, TikTok and ByteDance lawyers faced tough questions from the panel of judges for about two hours on Monday.
I didn’t see any valid argument within this article that indicates that we should not have this app banned. The only thing I saw was a 50 percent to 30 percent agreement, but that’s it.
If ByteDance loses the case, the TikTok app used by 170 million Americans could be blocked in the United States as soon as January 19th, 2025 – just one day before a new US president will be sworn into office.
One paragraph says:
Biden can extend the deadline by three months if it’s believed ByteDance is making progress towards either selling or divesting TikTok’s US assets by the deadline.
Seeing they’re squaring off now, we’ll see what the court has to say but I don’t think so. Have people like Kim Komando and Steve Gibson get on and say why its a good or bad idea to ban this app.
Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tenny reiterated that the app poses a national security threat due to the massive amounts of personal data collected on Americans, asserting that the Chinese government can and has tried to covertly manipulate and sway public opinion using the collected data points.
Yes, because you collect all this data including what we type. Every single character.
TikTok and ByteDance lawyer Andrew Pincus argued that the US government had not demonstrated that TikTok actually poses national security risks.
Security experts have, and have told every day users to remove the app including all other ByteDance application out there for the same thing. They didn’t say “do it or else” its probably more of a recommendation.
“The law before this court is unprecedented, and its effect would be staggering,” Pincus told the three judges, saying “for the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific US speaker banning its speech and the speech of 170 million Americans.”
I’m not on TikTok, one of my people was on it to see what it was about and isn’t and he agrees with what we’ve talked about on TSB.
The lawsuit claimed that if the statute is upheld, it would show that Congress can circumvent the First Amendment “by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down.”
Congress hasn’t told any newspaper to divest their assets away from China or anyone else. Where did this come from?
“It’s farcical to suggest that with this two billion lines of code – 40 times as big as the entire Windows operating system, changed 1,000 times every day – that somehow we’re going to detect that they’ve changed it,” Tenny said.
So they’re asking someone to go through the lines of code in the app so we can feel comfortable that they aren’t collecting our data and using it for what China wants to use it on? I call bullshit.
Rao cited an estimate that it could take three years to review the source code, not including updates.
That’s a lot of time, and updates can come out then. But I don’t see Bytedance or any other company bowing to our demands to tell us the truth of what they’re doing. The tech experts know.
Rao said many of TikTok’s arguments appear to want the court to treat Congress as an executive branch agency, rather than a legislature that “actually passed a law.”
I thought congress was a law making entity! Really?
There’s plenty more, so read the CyberScoop article titled TikTok faces off with US judges as court battle over app ban begins for complete details.
I honestly hope the ban stays. What a waste of reading time. Informative, yes: but a waste just the same. May TikTok, Bytedance and other Chinese companies who hide behind what they do decide one day to tell us what they’re really doing. Until then, fuck you!