President Biden signed a bill that states if TikTok doesn't cut ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance over the next nine months to a year, it will be banned in the U.S.
It’s a catch-22. To get elected, you need to learn to manipulate within the system. Once elected, you know how to leverage the system, so why would you change it?
The best chance we’ll have for systemic change will come when boomers die off. That shouldn’t discourage efforts today, but impart some hope for the future.
I want to believe that the most change will happens when boomers are gone, but I don’t trust that the new era of politicians won’t get caught up in the game.
It wasn’t put to a vote after being read aloud on two separate introductions. It was then forwarded to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where it went to die.
I’d be fine if they were allowed to invest in things like mutual funds so that they could take advantage of the market without being able to do insider trading of a specific stock.
That’s not true. It’s still illegal even though they get away with it. You’re thinking of bribery lobbying.
According to the STOCK Act of 2012, they could be brought up on charges for a trade performed after gaining knowledge of a pending change in legislation that would affect the value of a stock, prior to the legislation being publicly enacted. The SEC just hasn’t charged them.
What they do is not legal, they just live above the law.
Just to clarify. Insider trading is illegal but it is not illegal for politicians in Congress to use the information they obtain from their jobs (such as through classified meetings) to engage in stock market trades.
It’s not a failure of the law. It’s a failure of the SEC for not enforcing it.
MYTH: Members of Congress are exempt from insider trading laws.
FACT: Both a Congressional Research Service Report and House Administration Committee memo indicates that Members of Congress are subject to the same insider trading rules as the general public.
That’s simply not true. They have no exemption to insider trading laws. It simply comes down to trade timing.
The way the law is written, they could be brought up on charges for a trade performed after gaining knowledge of a pending change in legislation that would affect the value of a stock prior to the legislation being publicly enacted. The SEC just hasn’t charged them.
What they do is not legal, they just live above the law.
That doesn’t change the law. It’s simply evidence that Congress lives above it. Seven Democrat Senators cosponsored a bill in September to ban the practice entirely. It died at introduction.
Fun fact: Everyone with hundreds of millions+ in holdings either trades with insider information or pays others to do it, because our metrics and enforcement for insider trading are a gallows joke.
Pathetic watching ancient, feeble rich people about to return to the dust from whence they came still frantically positioning to boost their ego scores.
It’s as if they believe their preferred invisible sky mommy/daddy will accept a bribe of earthly currency.
Congressional Representatives and Senators are shielded from most insider trading laws. She could literately buy in, flip the SEC the bird, and go on her merry way.
Nobody is gonna use a VPN to get their TikTok fix. They’ll use Facebook Reels or YouTube shorts, since most content creators cross-post their stuff there anyway.
People on TikTok are already discussing using VPNs, so it will happen if not sold.
And either way, it’s almost like congress doesn’t care about addictive social media, seeing as it’s fine if domestic companies create addictive algorithms. They’ll even let foreign governments manipulate the populous via domestic companies, so long as they get a cut of the cash.
Passing a law to give the executive branch overreaching censorship authority over the internet while simultaneously campaigning that the other option in the next election wants to use the power of that office to overthrow democracy. This is the “good ending”.
In the U.S., we have given our third-party Trusted Technology Provider access to the code that drives the content you see - the For You feed - and we are on a path to allowing an unprecedented amount of third-party access to verify our source code and systems, something no other peer company has done.
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests? If that answer was yes, then absolutely. With Lemmy being of service to its users without making us its cattle, I’ll advocate for it as opposed to against it.
Does congress care about data collection and predatory algorithms, though? If so, why did they just waste their time crafting a targeted bill rather than actually making those practices illegal?
If congress suddenly decided that they didn’t like a company for whatever reason, they’ll craft another targeted bill like this one. Trump could win this year, do you really want this precedent set right before that?
Luckily, Lemmy is much more difficult due to it’s decentralized nature. However, since congress is clearly more than willing to craft targeted bills, it’s not out of the question.
Dude, the bill has nothing to do with anything you said. You’re criticizing capitalism and the lack of regulations on social media corporations.
My understanding is this bill is about forcing the sale of a company owned by a “foreign adversary” which is vague as shit just like the patriot act, which took (some of) the public 20+ years to realize was probably not a good idea.
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests?
Straight up yes, I’m gonna explain this hot take right now so buckle up.
Lemmy operates on the same basic set of principles that Reddit does. Upvotes send a post up, downvotes send a post down, moderation abilities and succession is controlled by the select few who create a popular channel, and also administrators. Pretty easy, pretty simple so far.
Algorithms don’t refer only to implicit incentive structures, but explicit ones, as well. How many posts have you seen on lemmy that are just really stupid propaganda memes? That’s what the platform explicitly incentivizes with it’s system of upvotes and downvotes. Low rent, low effort posts that vibe with a large majority of the audience are what’s going to get more attention and more engagement, and that’s going to push a post up, in a kind of feedback loop that hopefully tries to separate the wheat from the chaff. Really, all it does is separate the low rent dopamine content from everything else. I would say the incentivization of low rent behavior by these explicit mechanisms is somewhat predatory, yes.
As to how lemmy is enriched by this process, lemmy gets more attention. so lemmy gets more power inside of the sphere of internet attention, culture, and propaganda. Lemmy as a whole, obviously, which probably ends up meaning the developers. The whole thing being more open source and federated obviously puts this much more into contention than Reddit, sure, but that doesn’t really eliminate the basic problems that come about at the very conception of this platform, these problems of echo chambers. You can even see that forming now in a bunch of different instances. You can see that bias in hexbear, ml, world being plagued by a bunch of brainlet neolibs. It’s pretty obvious that the system confines everyone to their bubbles.
This is all to basically equivocate any interaction having been had online as being predatory in some way, and as enriching some party. Any mechanism which you use to organize the slew of information coming at you is going to have an inherent set of biases, pros and cons, and is inherently going to prey on some of those biases compared to others. So if we’ve equivocated all social media with basically all form of social interaction online, then the internet itself was probably a mistake.
Tl;dr IRC is a form of social media. Real life is a form of social media.
Does your posting history bear out that that’s why you’re here, though? 🤷♂️ I’m not asking for you to justify it to me, it’s just silly to pretend you’re not participating in something you say should be banned.
My posting history bears out extensive shitposting and calling things as they’re seen. I don’t take any issue with Lemmy/Fediverse due to how they’re decentralized and orchestrated. I’m against predatory algorithms and user manipulation. I believe that the Fediverse itself will be a good thing until it becomes the villain, much like how our utopian social experiments usually go.
I wonder how many of these lawmakers will be invested in the company that swoops in and saves the American public?
For real. You know Pelosi is already investing.
If she’s investing at the same time you’re getting the information, she missed the best time to buy. She might have hedged her bets and bought early
Fun fact: Congresspeople can legally inside trade, but the rest of us cannot.
Politicians should be banned from stock market. Total conflict of interest.
Eight Democrat Senators agree with you, and cosponsored a bill in September that died at introduction.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2773/all-actions-without-amendments
if we keep electing people trying to maintain the status quo, then it’ll never happen
It’s a catch-22. To get elected, you need to learn to manipulate within the system. Once elected, you know how to leverage the system, so why would you change it?
The best chance we’ll have for systemic change will come when boomers die off. That shouldn’t discourage efforts today, but impart some hope for the future.
I want to believe that the most change will happens when boomers are gone, but I don’t trust that the new era of politicians won’t get caught up in the game.
What does that mean?
It wasn’t put to a vote after being read aloud on two separate introductions. It was then forwarded to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where it went to die.
They don’t review it and then hand it back to congress?
Good Work just recently put out a video on this very topic. Informative and hilarious as usual!
https://youtu.be/vT-u-SPj4_c
Thanks! I never heard of this show.
I’d be fine if they were allowed to invest in things like mutual funds so that they could take advantage of the market without being able to do insider trading of a specific stock.
that would be better, but they could still invest in specific sectors or industries.
Yep, and maybe that’s somewhat acceptable, but we could also confine it to diversified mutual funds meeting specific criteria.
Edit: confine, not congratulations
Congratulations!
But yeah you gotta limit it
That’s not true. It’s still illegal even though they get away with it. You’re thinking of
briberylobbying.According to the STOCK Act of 2012, they could be brought up on charges for a trade performed after gaining knowledge of a pending change in legislation that would affect the value of a stock, prior to the legislation being publicly enacted. The SEC just hasn’t charged them.
What they do is not legal, they just live above the law.
Just to clarify. Insider trading is illegal but it is not illegal for politicians in Congress to use the information they obtain from their jobs (such as through classified meetings) to engage in stock market trades.
It’s not a failure of the law. It’s a failure of the SEC for not enforcing it.
https://perry.house.gov/how-can-scott-help/myths-about-congress.htm#:~:text=FACT%3A Both a Congressional Research
That’s simply not true. They have no exemption to insider trading laws. It simply comes down to trade timing.
The way the law is written, they could be brought up on charges for a trade performed after gaining knowledge of a pending change in legislation that would affect the value of a stock prior to the legislation being publicly enacted. The SEC just hasn’t charged them.
What they do is not legal, they just live above the law.
If everyone doing it gets away with it, then is it actually illegal?
Yes. It is. They just need to be arrested and prosecuted. I agree that it should be taken more seriously, considering that it’s against the law.
No one has ever been prosecuted in the decade and change that it has been illegal, despite frequent violations.
That doesn’t change the law. It’s simply evidence that Congress lives above it. Seven Democrat Senators cosponsored a bill in September to ban the practice entirely. It died at introduction.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2773/all-actions-without-amendments
Martha. Stewart.
Fun fact: Everyone with hundreds of millions+ in holdings either trades with insider information or pays others to do it, because our metrics and enforcement for insider trading are a gallows joke.
For sure they’re already in way before general public
Pathetic watching ancient, feeble rich people about to return to the dust from whence they came still frantically positioning to boost their ego scores.
It’s as if they believe their preferred invisible sky mommy/daddy will accept a bribe of earthly currency.
I would rather chill in my basement.
it’s an addiction
Don’t worry everyone, it’s just pelosi’s 3rd cousin doing the investing so that makes everything totally cool and totally legal.
Congressional Representatives and Senators are shielded from most insider trading laws. She could literately buy in, flip the SEC the bird, and go on her merry way.
Mnuchin (fmr Trump Treasury Sec) is already setting up a group to try and buy it apparently.
The company behind tik tok said they will not sell they America is only 20% of their global market. They have refused to give their source code.
So guess app just won’t work in US. Dumb ass lawmakers only people this hurt are the US citizens that are using it to make money.
The good ending
Except you can just…VPN to almost any country on the planet
Nobody is gonna use a VPN to get their TikTok fix. They’ll use Facebook Reels or YouTube shorts, since most content creators cross-post their stuff there anyway.
People on TikTok are already discussing using VPNs, so it will happen if not sold.
And either way, it’s almost like congress doesn’t care about addictive social media, seeing as it’s fine if domestic companies create addictive algorithms. They’ll even let foreign governments manipulate the populous via domestic companies, so long as they get a cut of the cash.
You need more than a handful of brain cells for that, so it’s not exactly the easily manipulated target audience of TikTok.
Passing a law to give the executive branch overreaching censorship authority over the internet while simultaneously campaigning that the other option in the next election wants to use the power of that office to overthrow democracy. This is the “good ending”.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/ensuring-a-safe-authentic-space-during-times-of-conflict
China. It’s China that “said”.
I don’t see how anyone is hurt by losing access to Tiktok. The only sad part about this is that all social media isn’t banned.
You are literally posting this to social media right now. Do you think it would be cool to ban or force a sale of Lemmy to a US corp?
Is Lemmy using a predatory algorithm designed to enrich itself at the expense of the well being of its users and utilize its platform to influence US policy against its own interests? If that answer was yes, then absolutely. With Lemmy being of service to its users without making us its cattle, I’ll advocate for it as opposed to against it.
Does congress care about data collection and predatory algorithms, though? If so, why did they just waste their time crafting a targeted bill rather than actually making those practices illegal?
If congress suddenly decided that they didn’t like a company for whatever reason, they’ll craft another targeted bill like this one. Trump could win this year, do you really want this precedent set right before that?
Luckily, Lemmy is much more difficult due to it’s decentralized nature. However, since congress is clearly more than willing to craft targeted bills, it’s not out of the question.
Dude, the bill has nothing to do with anything you said. You’re criticizing capitalism and the lack of regulations on social media corporations.
My understanding is this bill is about forcing the sale of a company owned by a “foreign adversary” which is vague as shit just like the patriot act, which took (some of) the public 20+ years to realize was probably not a good idea.
Straight up yes, I’m gonna explain this hot take right now so buckle up.
Lemmy operates on the same basic set of principles that Reddit does. Upvotes send a post up, downvotes send a post down, moderation abilities and succession is controlled by the select few who create a popular channel, and also administrators. Pretty easy, pretty simple so far.
Algorithms don’t refer only to implicit incentive structures, but explicit ones, as well. How many posts have you seen on lemmy that are just really stupid propaganda memes? That’s what the platform explicitly incentivizes with it’s system of upvotes and downvotes. Low rent, low effort posts that vibe with a large majority of the audience are what’s going to get more attention and more engagement, and that’s going to push a post up, in a kind of feedback loop that hopefully tries to separate the wheat from the chaff. Really, all it does is separate the low rent dopamine content from everything else. I would say the incentivization of low rent behavior by these explicit mechanisms is somewhat predatory, yes.
As to how lemmy is enriched by this process, lemmy gets more attention. so lemmy gets more power inside of the sphere of internet attention, culture, and propaganda. Lemmy as a whole, obviously, which probably ends up meaning the developers. The whole thing being more open source and federated obviously puts this much more into contention than Reddit, sure, but that doesn’t really eliminate the basic problems that come about at the very conception of this platform, these problems of echo chambers. You can even see that forming now in a bunch of different instances. You can see that bias in hexbear, ml, world being plagued by a bunch of brainlet neolibs. It’s pretty obvious that the system confines everyone to their bubbles.
This is all to basically equivocate any interaction having been had online as being predatory in some way, and as enriching some party. Any mechanism which you use to organize the slew of information coming at you is going to have an inherent set of biases, pros and cons, and is inherently going to prey on some of those biases compared to others. So if we’ve equivocated all social media with basically all form of social interaction online, then the internet itself was probably a mistake.
Tl;dr IRC is a form of social media. Real life is a form of social media.
You are on social media. You can leave any time, that was always allowed.
I see nothing wrong with posting to social media to advocate against it, I’ll feel free to stay.
Does your posting history bear out that that’s why you’re here, though? 🤷♂️ I’m not asking for you to justify it to me, it’s just silly to pretend you’re not participating in something you say should be banned.
My posting history bears out extensive shitposting and calling things as they’re seen. I don’t take any issue with Lemmy/Fediverse due to how they’re decentralized and orchestrated. I’m against predatory algorithms and user manipulation. I believe that the Fediverse itself will be a good thing until it becomes the villain, much like how our utopian social experiments usually go.