Investing in education is counter to the clear goals of the USA. Smart people would revolt, protest,and you know, hold companies and billionaires accountable. Uneducated people are often poor, can’t afford to fight back and are scared they will lose what little they have.

At some point we need all to fight back, but it might be too late. And worse, too few will join in out of fear of death.

If people can pick apart China's propaganda it means they can pick apart US propaganda, too.

Can't have that.

I have to tell you, I know many intelligent people that have succumbed to propaganda, and outrage porn addiction. I see it continue to happen on all sides of the political isle. (This isn't a both sides kind of statement, simply acknowledgement that the same tactics work on our brain, indifferent of political ideology.)

Whether they are hooked on the dopamine rush of rage baiting up votes, likes or comments; or only seeing everything in the world through a myopic lens of negativity, it has captured many of my friends and family, including myself for a time.

For some their drug is Fox News, others it's Reddit, Facebook or TikTok, the results are often the same.

I have yet to figure out a manner in which to communicate with individuals who spend considerable amounts of time in echo chambers, constantly having their personal beliefs reinforced. Evasion of cognitive dissonance and social conflict are very powerful psychological motivations. I wish I knew the solution.

And yet China is banning basically the whole Western internet, foreign companies must enter joint ventures with Chinese companies under government control. Reciprocity is fair. Why should Byte Dance be allowed to take in billions to fund Chinese gulags?

Well, of course. They aren't banning Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. That's exactly how they want it.

What do you think billionaires are bribing congress for? Regulatory capture keeps all the competitors out. Whereas actually fixing the problem of social media brainwashing would cost them money.

I don't like TikTok, but I do take issue with the government deciding what is and isn't available to me.

Except they would be ignoring all the other shitty social networks but it's a start.

what did tiktok do to deserve being banned, and why is it okay for other companies to do that?

Except for the part where they couldn't get support for it twice so they shoved it in here to get their way? But that's ok because you don't like the silly dancing app that you know basically nothing about right? Other than "China bad", of course.

Why are you cheerleading for TikTok to remain in the hands of a US adversary, during the same week when said adversary forced a US company to abjectly ban US-based messaging apps?

Retaliation. Tit for tit.

mimes eating popcorn, while pointing to overlayed captions, with a Taylor Swift song playing in the background

This was a separate bill. Til Tok, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel were all separate. They were brought to the floor at the same time, but they could’ve all been voted on differently

You need to fix voting in congress first. The reason riders get put in is because some small bills that are of no interest to some in congress would never make it because they’d never get enough votes to pass. Of course the system got abused to hell with poison pills and shitty bills that are crammed into popular legislation to make it hard to pass or make good legislation pass shitty laws.

So yeah, split the bills. But make these clowns vote on everything.

The poor kids will lose everything because of course you can only host that kind of fucking trash on tik tok!! It's either on tik tok or not at all!!!

it's ridiculous how attached these children are to a chinese company lol. They just host the goddamn footage and provide an algo to feed that shit to you. THAT'S IT! TT ain't some special fuckin unicorn

but the kids are kids and they don't want to think about and understand that. Most on tiktok probably don't even know of or remember Vine or the other previous iterations of the same exact shit concept. But noooo, the CCP must be allowed to frame the narratives/algos and vacuum up all possible PII data!!!

now that aside, the VPN part you mention is indeed disturbing. Could you please provide the source / exact wording for this claim? I want to read more about it but can't find anything close to what you are suggesting

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8038/text?s=3&r=1#toc-H2669E9E74E8A43039D7E92B5E8152F38

VPN or virtual private network are not mentioned anywhere