Yahoo Autos Say Goodbye To CarTok
TikTok, the massive social network full of short-form videos and big oil propaganda, is on its way to meeting a terrible fate. A bill demanding that parent company ByteDance either sell the platform or see its removal from U.S. app stores passed the House of Representatives with an overwhelming majority today, leaving all those car posts in jeopardy of disappearing forever.
The TikTok ban, officially known as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, prevents Chinese corporation ByteDance from operating “any... application or service” in the United States. In the bill’s own, more complicated words:
(1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED 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, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled 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.
The law targets app stores specifically, banning them from distributing or pushing updates for “foreign controlled applications,” a phrase the bill goes on to helpfully define:
(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 foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly 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 idea is, since ByteDance is a Chinese company, it isn’t allowed to mine data from U.S. phones. In fact, no person who even lives in a “foreign adversary country,” regardless of citizenship, cannot develop or own applications that run on American phones. The bill, though, oddly only targets social media apps:
(2) COVERED COMPANY.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—The term “covered company” means an entity that operates, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that—
(i) permits a user to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content;
(ii) has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users with respect to at least 2 of the 3 months preceding the date on which a relevant determination of the President is made pursuant to paragraph (3)(B);
(iii) enables 1 or more users to generate or distribute content that can be viewed by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application; and
(iv) enables 1 or more users to view content generated by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application.
So a Chinese-written Notes app seems to remain acceptable, but TikTok isn’t. In fact, it’s specifically named in the bill:
(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.—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;
It seems that data mining isn’t the real concern here, as “foreign adversary” apps are still allowed access to American phones an American phone users — so long as the app in question isn’t a social media network. The social content itself, of course, can’t be the concern either — you can just go on the internet and view that anyway, regardless of whether you own the app it was published to. Temu and Shien are built around users sending money to a “foreign adversary,” but they’re okay because you can’t post pictures on them? The inconsistency is mind boggling.
So... what’s the problem here? Do lawmakers really understand data that poorly, or are they just upset that their younger prospective voters might have seen a mean video about their campaign promises? That’s how you win the kids to your political side, right? By banning the things they like?
If you’re curious, the “foreign adversary” nations in question come from a small list in an entirely different section of legal code: North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran. Who knew that car videos and dances were such a national security threat?
