Technology

BLEEP BLOOP you sound programed. The government doesn't like that there's a media source that they can't control.

CISA's director literally just testified to congress about China fucking with shit.

Also, I see Instagram reels as a competitor.

When contacted about those allegations by the BBC, TikTok provided the statement: "With regards to users being locked out of the app until they called, that is false. All users had two methods for dismissing the notifications."

Probably the usual hidden grey button "dismiss" over greyish background, just as Google, Microsoft and some other do.

Nope, not true.

For example — last year they sent what a spy balloon over the USA in what a lot of experts believe was a test of US defence systems - weapons used to shoot down the balloon had never been used before outside of top secret test facilities. And that balloon was covered in high tech sensors and almost certainly broadcasting data in real time. There's no plausible explanation for the incident other than to find out how the US would respond.

Why does China want to know how US defence systems work? A lot of people already think there's a chance of war between the two super powers. That balloon incident didn't help things.

And what went viral on TikTok? Claims that the balloon was a actually flying over Canada and never went near US soil. Claims that it was launched by kids in the USA. Where did those claims originate from? Nobody knows, but it seems pretty coincidental. These claims were spread on other social networks too - but they went viral on TikTok alone.

That's not the only incident, it's just one of the most recent one that involved TikTok. Others have been far more serious especially in busy international waters south of China.

If Twitter's financial backing by Saudi Arabia/Qatar is ever a concern, I'm sure the US will act on that as well.

Twitter / X gets railed on nonstop. Where are you getting the idea that anyone thinks it’s not “bad”?!

AFAIU - but that is a veeeeeery "skimmed" take on the issue, so please check what I wrote before taking it at face value:

There were legitimate concerns about tiktok (hugely popular platform distributed as a "black box", with very concerning permissions and behaviours, and owned by a foreign actor - tiktok is "unavailable" domestically - that demonstrably uses technology in an extremely dystopian way on their own population), so there was quite a lot of public pressure to "do something about it", and of course politicians jumped on the opportunity to make a (very) broadly fitting legislation targeting it, coincidentally also having utterly damaging and immensely concerning side-effects for the end users privacy and sovereignty of all applications.

Following that, some of the people got (rightly) concerned about the legislation's effect on their rights and privacy, but the vast majority just saw that their digital crack cocaine was being attacked, and started whining with arguments of varying relevance. At the end of the day, though, a given platform is irrelevant. What is, is the abilities given to the users, and the possibilities that those create. But now, we have a deeply concerning platform, still being immensely popular and uncontrolled; a totally unfitting legislation with incredibly wild "side effects"; and a growing, misguided popular movement to "save tiktok" that will only make a legitimate attempt at mitigating it much harder. Yay.

Edit: after quite some digging, I found the bill here (PDF) - source.

Edit 2: to answer your question more directly:

Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?

The justification is "America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States".

Which is IMHO fair. It isn't like the CCP would let American corporations, let alone government controlled ones, run services in China, let alone psychiatrically alienate their citizens, instigate discord and radicalization, potentially manipulate the public opinion, have the capacity to covertly do psyops, and actively, aggressively collect any and all data.

The potential problem I see (and probably what concerns most of the privacy advocates out there) however, is that while the bill is aiming at tiktok in particular (fine), it also targets any "foreign adversary". Meaning that, AFAIU (but IANAL), all the US would have to do to completely and entirely nuke an app (or an entire federated platform!) in the US would be to declare any foreign entity (country, state, corporation, person, etc) their "adversary". Effectively giving them a single "button" to directly nuke any app and services they don't see fit. No matter how legitimate.