Trumpland Apparently Just Forgot About Its Manufactured TikTok Hysteria
We’ve repeatedly made it pretty clear that President Trump’s effort to ban TikTok is little more than a performative, xenophobic, idiotic mess. For one, the effort appears more focused on trying to get Trump-allied Oracle a new hosting deal than any serious concern about consumer privacy and security. Two, banning a teen dancing and lip syncing app does jack shit in terms of thwarting China or pro
tecting U.S. consumer privacy, since the U.S. telecom, app, and adtech markets are largely an unaccountable privacy mess making it trivial to obtain this kind of data elsewhere.
Further highlighting the performative nature of the proposed ban, TikTok this week effectively stated that Trumpland appears to have forgotten about the proposed ban entirely. TikTok filed a petition this week in a US Court of Appeals calling for a review of actions by the Trump administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), pointing out that the deadline for ByteDance to sell off its US assets over national security concerns came and went this week with no action from Trumpland or word on any extension.
Apparently the whole TikTok thing fell off the radar as the administration focuses on pretending it didn’t lose the election. Whoops:
“For a year, TikTok has actively engaged with CFIUS in good faith to address its national security concerns, even as we disagree with its assessment,” TikTok says in a statement to The Verge. “In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework.”
This is, of course, because the TikTok ban was largely performative bullshit and cronyism, designed to drum up some hysteria over China and provide Trump with leverage in his harmful trade war while driving some additional cash and influence to his U.S. allies.
If the Trump administration and GOP genuinely cared about U.S. consumer privacy and security, there’s a laundry list of more pressing issues it could do something about, including shoring up vulnerable U.S. telecom infrastructure, passing even a baseline U.S. privacy law for the internet era, better policing the widespread abuse of user location data (by corporations and the government alike), attempt to shore up security in the internet of broken things sector, secure election integrity, and stop, you know, trying to destroy encryption.
Neither Trump Inc. nor the Trump-allied GOP does any of this because it’s more interested in bad faith posturing and bullshit than serious governance or public welfare. If the folks fanning their face over TikTok truly cared about consumer privacy and security, we’d do something about the broader, unaccountable mess that is adtech, app, government, and telecom data privacy. Instead we get a giant pile of bullshit and a mountain of billable legal man hours over something that was never serious adult policy to begin with.
Author: Karl Bode
Date: 2020-11-12
techdirt.com
| White House Offers To Allow Renaming Confederate Bases… In Exchange For Getting Rid Of Section 230 (2020-11-20) | Lets state upfront that there is no way in hell this is happening and its all just performative nonsense No one is actually going to do this However the NY Times is reporting that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has floated the idea of compromise to get the annual NDAA passed after President Trump has whined about it requiring the renaming of military bases named after Confederacy leaders .. |
| While Social Media Was Quick To Highlight And Limit The Spread Of False Claims Of Election Victory, Traditional Media Just Let It Flow (2020-11-04) | For four years all weve been hearing about is how social media was this terrible source of disinformation that had to be regulated because they were destroying democracy and all that And so what happened last night/early this morning when Donald Trump falsely tried to claim he had won prior to all the votes being counted? Twitter and Facebook both reacted pretty quickly to flag the information and.. |
| Twitch’s No Good, Very Bad Time Continues: Part 1 (2020-11-18) | Im beginning to wonder if the folks that run Twitch are secretly attempting to commit corporate suicide The past several weeks have seen the popular streaming platform embroiled in controversy It began when in response to the RIAA labels DMCA attacks on streamers Twitch took the unprecedented step to simply nuke a zillion hours of recorded content without warning its creators In the wake of that t.. |
| Facial Recognition Company’s Employees Abused Tech To Sexually Harass Coworkers (2020-11-09) | Someone wants to out-evil Clearview Now there are a lot of questionable facial recognition tech vendors but most have decided to cede most hated to Clearview But another startup thinks it should generate as much ill will as possible before securing prominent marketplace status The unanswered question I guess is whether to direct your AI-enabled sociopathy at random individuals or your own coworker.. |
| Trump’s FCC Nominee Asked Fox News To Help Destroy Section 230 To Help Elect More Republicans (2020-11-25) | Weve written a few times about Nathan Simington who is currently nominated to take over Michael ORiellys seat at the FCC As youll recall ORiellys renomination was withdrawn after he dared to give a talk in which he noted accurately that the 1st Amendment means that the government cannot regulate how private companies handle content moderation Simington in contrast to ORielly has been at the center.. |
| Lawsuit Says NYPD Is Still Engaging In Unconstitutional Stops Of New York Residents (2020-11-04) | A federal judge shut down the NYPDs stop and frisk program back in 2013 finding the suspicionless stops mainly of minorities were unconstitutional Then-mayor Mike Bloomberg defended the program – often frothily – by claiming it was essential to maintaining order Without stop and frisk the streets would be awash in deadly criminals and their deadly weapons An actual look at the data showed someth.. |
| Just As #DaiperDon Starts Trending, Trump Claims That Twitter Uses ‘Fake’ Trends, Calls For ‘Termination’ Of Section 230 (2020-11-30) | Its no secret that Donald Trump doesnt like Section 230 Wait Actually lets back up and try that again: its no secret that Donald Trump doesnt like what he thinks Section 230 is about which has little-to-no-resemblance to what Section 230 is actually about However over the long weekend things took an even more ridiculous turn than usual It started on Thanksgiving when the President was signing some.. |
| Daily Deal: The Professional Video And Audio Production Bundle (2020-11-20) | The Professional Video and Audio Production Bundle has 6 courses to help you create edit and produce videos and music like a pro Youll learn recording processing mixing live streaming and more Its on sale for $40 and use the code SAVE15NOV to get an additional 15% off on this bundle and other deals throughout the store Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce A portio.. |
| Daily Deal: The Electrical And Circuits Engineering Bundle (2020-11-19) | The Electrical And Circuits Engineering Bundle has 13 courses designed to help you better understand electrical circuits machines power generation and electronics Youll start by learning basic concepts such as current voltage power and energy regarding the electric circuits as well as the basic laws of electric circuits as resistance conductance the combination of resistance and conductance KVL KC.. |
| Portland’s Facial Recognition Ban Won’t Stop Private Citizens From Rolling Their Own Tech To ID Cops (2020-11-10) | Portland Oregon recently passed a ban on facial recognition tech Unlike bans passed elsewhere in the country this one wasnt fucking around The ban covered private companies as well as local government agencies Weve yet to see whether or not the courts will allow Portland to tell local businesses how to run their business but the new ban has posed a novel problem not seen elsewhere Residents trying.. |
