Democracy doesn't work when centralized powers build tools like TikTok or Facebook to influence people's thoughts with bias and other psychological hacks.

If it were me, I would ban all social media platforms larger than 100,000, and create task forces to reign in on predatory marketing and social media collusion.

People just can't be trusted to see how they are constantly being manipulated by companies with deep pockets and foreign governments. Children and adults alike. It's not people's fault either.

Either that or we need a widespread social repudiation of these platforms, a wake up to the fact that our minds are constantly being poisoned, like Tobacco was reigned in.

After this staffer asked a caller to give their name to record their message, the young caller asked if they could leave their comment without giving out their information. The senior staffer recalled explaining that protecting the caller’s private information was exactly the point of the legislation they were calling about.

No, every other platform is free to violate your privacy and serve you up propaganda from domestic/foreign misinformation campaigns without any repercussions. If this bill addressed that in some way I would likely support it.

But this is about China, specifically. Russian bot/click farms and homegrown manipulation of social media platforms are a much more apparent and immediate issue that has already played a significantly role in the destruction of Democracy and accountability in this country.

censorship, censorship, censorship = narrative control. That simple.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and is a lead author of the bill, said he’d worked for eight months with colleagues including Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) to prepare it.

Many members have already looked skeptically at the proliferation of pro-Palestinian messages on the app in the wake of the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas, and the subsequent Israeli response that has killed tens of thousands of Gaza residents.

In a letter to Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi on Monday, TikTok’s vice president of public policy Michael Beckerman wrote, “It is offensive that you would complain about hearing from your constituents and seek to deny them of their constitutional rights.

Immediately before the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50–0 to pass the legislation last Thursday, they heard from representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a classified hearing.

In a statement after the House vote on the TikTok bill, Cantwell said she’d try to find “a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties,” but did not necessarily commit to advancing that exact legislation.

“I’m very concerned about foreign adversaries’ exploitation of Americans’ sensitive data and their attempts to build backdoors in our information communication technology and services supply chains,” Cantwell said.

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