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'Honestly thought this was satire': Experts scoff at new Trump filing 'full of puffery' (www.rawstory.com)

submitted 18 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

44 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary

Donald Trump submitted a Supreme Court filing opposing a TikTok ban, citing his “dealmaking expertise” and promising to resolve national security concerns.

The brief advocates delaying the case to allow Trump to address it politically.

Legal experts criticized the filing for being overly self-promotional and unprecedented, with some mistaking it for satire.

Critics noted its unusual tone and highlighted the involvement of Trump’s potential solicitor general pick, D. John Sauer, in drafting the document.

The case concerns TikTok’s alleged violations of privacy laws and ties to China.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago

This was always the tactic. gop attacked tiktok, which is extremely popular, if trump lost they'd insist on the "ban" and try to hang the unpopularity of the move that they demanded on Biden. If trump won, they'd chicken shit away from the move, claim trump "saved" something to try to grab opportunistic popularity moment as fuel for the next ghoulish live they need to make publicly that will lose them goodwill.

America is decidedly fucked. The general public isn't equipped to see below the surface layer of this shit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

promising to resolve national security concerns

The guy with boxes of TS documents in his bathroom suddenly cares about national security? I don't think so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Why not? He was personally seeing to their security.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Everyone needs to stop thinking Trump is some master of satire, or that he is gasp unprecedented. Yeah, we fucking know, pay attention! He’s been beyond the pale and indistinguishable from a sketch comedy dropout for decades now. These “legal experts” need to either learn a goddamn lesson for once, or just shut the fuck up about him, you’re not helping by being too unimaginative to recognize reality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

I wish he was unpresidented

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Nick Kroll was right. Trump is super entertaining. So give him a talk show, not control of a country.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 34 minutes ago

man, I cannot stand listening to that asshat talk. It's just word gibberish and always about himself.

But if he renounced his presidency and started a morning talkshow? I'd probably watch it. Just for the schadenfreude.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

trump meets with CEO of TickTok

I'm sure the conversation was legit and above board and this filing had nothing to do with the visit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

There's definitely not going to be a massive donation to his inauguration fund.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

All the while in China TikTok is forbidden. They have a Chinese version called Douyin, and it limits the content to educational instead of entertainment and the time spent to maximum 2 hours for people under 18.

What does it tell you that the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people from the influence of TikTok?

It's simply a propaganda tool to influence people and it keeps them addicted using an algorithm. It's a highly specialized psy ops tool. It makes the world dumber and uses the same addictiveness to educate the Chinese at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

What does it tell you that the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people from the influence of TikTok?

Absolutely nothing?

This is a country that has incredibly authoritarian laws on the books regarding the internet because it doesn't want it's people reading """""western propaganda"""", why would we assume it's reason for continuing that behaviour isn't the same as it's always been: bullshit

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

It tells me that TikTok is used to brainwash people and that they don't want their own weapon used against them.

And I agree other social media does the same. Maybe a little less obvious. The Chinese authoritarian government can obviously protect their own from this much more effectively.

In America blocking an app like TikTok is considered taking away the freedom of people to choose and express themselves. Especially after getting a large part of the population addicted to the crappy content.

China is using the freedom of the west against them.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

We used to put you people in asylums, modern countries out you people in psych wards.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Great argument, well substantiated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 46 minutes ago* (last edited 45 minutes ago) (1 children)

What argument can be made against actual schizophrenic ramblings with absolutely no basis in reality? How can one start to address the finer points of an argument made during a psychotic break?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 26 minutes ago

What part of the argument has no basis in reality?

These are the facts:

China has their own version of TikTok, for which they control much of the nature of the content.
this alternative app is only meant for the Chinese population and limits usage, so young people are less prone to waste a lot of time on it.
meanwhile the actual TikTok app features tons of misinformation and is made to be highly addictive
it is also quite well-known that TikTok collects most user information of pretty much all social media apps.
we know nothing about the underlying algorithms, but it's pretty safe to assume the Chinese government doesn't have our best interest in mind.

My conclusion is that it's not unlikely TikTok is used at least to some degree, by the Chinese as a tool for spying, and to spread propaganda to further their own agenda.

While the Chinese version is somewhat educational, in the west it spreads misinformation, it has people waste time doing dumb ass dances and playback songs. It effectively makes people stupid.

Now please enlighten me and show me my logical fallacy.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 14 hours ago (4 children)

If that's sufficient for a ban, then most or all the rest of social and mass media would qualify as well.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 14 hours ago

I accept your terms.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Tell me what other social media use separate versions and time limits between countries?

But I agree that other social media should be regarded critically as well. It's just that china takes a very obvious approach trying to shield their own people from the obviously effective propaganda machine they created.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

I don't know about time limits, but social media does get censored on a per-country basis depending on the government of each country. Also, each person has their own tailored content based on the algorithm that it might as well be considered a different version.

We could just as easily mandate restrictions on data or require timers for children on social media instead of doing a full ban. Note that the US was fine with keeping tiktok if they sold to an American company. Something tells me the brain rot would not be lessened and no special timer would be implemented by the new ownership if it were to have gone through.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I think part of the argument here is the very asymmetric nature of Chinese social media that makes their intentions rather obvious. They banned almost every foreign website/app or heavily restricted them like almost no other country did. They aren’t even allowing their own apps when they’re not primarily made for domestic use. It’s a tool to control people and that’s how the Chinese government uses it. It’s not just another corporation trying to turn a profit by wasting our time with nonsense and only destroying democracy as a byproduct like Facebook. Destroying Democracy is the point of TikTok as we’re seeing all around the world where it aggressively pushes anti-democratic content.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 hours ago

Just a reminder, Tiktok isn't a Chinese app nor is it a Chinese company. You racist conservatives need to come back to reality. Or go back to the fox news comment section.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 14 hours ago

Whatabout!!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago

it limits the content to educational instead of entertainment and the time spent to maximum 2 hours for people under 18

That sounds WAY too nanny state restrictive to me and I'm SCANDINAVIAN!

the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people

Good one 😆

It's simply a propaganda tool to influence people and it keeps them addicted using an algorithm. It's a highly specialized psy ops tool. It makes the world dumber

Same has been truthfully said about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The behavior of Meta and Musk aren't any better and your data isn't any more safe from ending up in the hands of hostile and/or totalitarian governments such as those of India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Israel.

The REAL reason why politician want to ban Tiktok is that it's the only serious competitor to the other radicalization machines whose parent companies and key people "just happen to" donate a lot more money to those same politicians than ByteDance does. The official reasons are just a smoke screen.

I'd be fine with it if they were actually honest about it and banned the aforementioned American competitors too, though. Short of that, banning Tiktok doesn't really solve any problems without exacerbating others.

Oh, and for all its censorship on behalf of the Chinese government, Tiktok is also the only major social media platform that doesn't heavily censor legitimate protest against the fascist apartheid regime of Israel.

I'm sure that the push has NOTHING to do with the fact that most if not all of the politicians in favor are taking a ton of blood money from AIPAC and other de facto Israeli government entities badly disguised as American nonprofits either! 🙄

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Douyin content is very similar to TikTok content. There are many popular douyin creators whose content gets copied to TikTok. There's loads of makeup, cosplay, cooking, skit, DIY, etc. Mukbang style content is very popular there as well. Their makeup and fashion content, like on TikTok, is sponsored by huge international brands like Mac and Gucci and others along those lines. Also super popular is pet content, like people who run cat shelters and dog walkers and stuff. There is also no age verification to use the app unless you want to post or comment yourself, and there is no time limit to use it. Some TikTok creators get reposted to douyin as well, but the overwhelming majority of people in china do not speak English, and to post on it, you need to be a citizen of China. Not that there aren't ways around it, but it's harder than it's worth.

I get that you're paranoid about Chinese international political interference, rightfully so in some ways. But this is just blatant lies and fear mongering. I've used the app extensively myself to follow some makeup content creators from China. It's functionally identical to TikTok. Censorship does exist, but it's based around specific events, mostly from what i can tell. I don't use to find political content, but I wouldn't be surprised if they censored content based on stuff like the Honk Kong protests. Propaganda is also on there, most likely, but I never encounter it in my feed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

There are many popular douyin creators whose content gets copied to TikTok.

How often is that true the other way around?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Pretty uncommonly, since you need a valid Chinese phone number to make a douyin account. A few english speakers living outside china get posted there, but English isn't a super common language in mainland China. It's there of course but not widespread enough for it to be much of a market for it. Not to mention America and China are culturally quite a ways apart and I'd imagine western content wouldn't see widespread popularity there.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm amazed you do not see the issue with this not being a reciprocal situation. What you're doing is making poor excuses for what is very clearly a two-tiered system, one for people in China where the content can be easily controlled, and one for people outside of China where it can't... but where it can absolutely still be used for propaganda. By, for example, letting "many popular Douyin creators" have their content reposted on TikTok.

And before you start in with me about it, I could not give less of a shit whether or not it's banned. I'm just under no illusions about what the situation is here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I just don't see this in particular as a two tiered system. Chinese citizens don't use TikTok content is copied over from that platform by other people. Douyin connects with a bunch of the other social media systems created in China, it's exclusively in Chinese and is made for Chinese citizens. TikTok is usable, essentially anywhere else in the world. Douyin is usable in China specifically. You can use it outside of China you just cannot comment or post.

I don't know I'm just under no particularly obsessive illusions about China. Yeah they definitely censor their citizens in intrusive and oppressive ways and that's wrong and bad. So does nearly every single nation on earth. Why would my beef with China specifically, as opposed to American social media which spans the globe and is constantly flooded with western neoliberal propaganda?

Like it's just silly and frustrating the way so much fear and discussions is directed towards China specifically. Like to a wild extent like anything done by China anything Chinese must be nefarious in some way. Fear mongering around TikTok is just. Weird. The same reaction doesn't exist towards reels even though reels censors even more subjects than TikTok does.

And like that's what my initial comment was about right I saw someone say something I know wasn't true because I've used the app myself.

And you know me too, we've talked many times we're definitely not strangers haha. We've been on the same and on opposite sides of at least a dozen discussions on Lemmy before. You can have some small measure of faith that I'm not a tankie here to act like authoritarian oppression is good actually.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It's a two-tiered system because there are literally two tiers. There's one where people can use TikTok outside China and one where people can use Douyin inside China. And content only goes one way. I'm not sure how more clear this can be made to you.

Also, stop making this about you. It isn't about you. I never made any claims about you apart from you making poor excuses for a two-tiered system. And I stand by that claim.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not making anything about me I'm just responding to this general skepticism about the intention of my statements. If I read your comment incorrectly then I'm sorry. I'm also not in the business of acting like this is a discussion that matters to anyone beyond you and me, this isn't groundbreaking political commentary that people are anxiously watching play out. Acknowledging the fact that we've spoken many times before is I think worthwhile within that context.

Tiers implies one is above the other somehow. But they aren't they're two distinct systems. I'm going to loop back to what I initially commented about which was the app itself and how it doesn't function the way the commenter I responded to described it. Why would someone lie about how an app functions? Why specifically douyin, why specifically a Chinese social media app? It's worth examining that decision and the ideas that it fosters about China.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I have said nothing about your intentions. I have no idea why you are suggesting I am. I told you what I said about you and I still stand by it. You are poorly defending a two-tiered system.

Why you are defending it is not something I care to speculate on.

And one is above the other if content only goes one way. Because only one group can see content from both platforms. The other can't. This is some basic logic...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Nazi loving shit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Careful now, the Nazi often gets people banned from all of . world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

That’s because they’re nazis lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

Okay, yeah, your framing at the end there makes sense. I'm not sure how or why our conversation came about that specifically, but yes Chinese citizens are essentially sequestered on Douyin. I don't know that they are unable to install TikTok, but I kind of assume so.

I still think the framing of two tiered is an odd way to put it but I at least understand what it is you're trying to say.

You can imagine my confusion on what I thought was a pretty innocuous comment touching on something most people don't know much about that I actually do and was met with some pretty intense responses from you lol.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 16 hours ago

“You see, I made a deal with them… and I don’t get paid if they get banned”

[–] [email protected] 23 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

We’ll see how idiotic and servile the Supreme Court will be under Trump. Good to know early on.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah the outcome of this will be telling. From a legal standpoint it should be clear - Congress has passed a law and the president has signed it into law.

Trumps plans and intentions are irrelevant - he should need congress to pass a new law to undo this one. It'd be bizarre for the Supreme Court to undermine the law based on a whim of the president elect.

But if the Supreme Court do go along with trumps whims then we'll have a very clear idea how bad things have already gotten. However it's clear things are already pretty fucking bad as the US constitution and infrastructure failed to stop an insurrectionist getting power.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

But if the Supreme Court do go along with trumps whims then we’ll have a very clear idea how bad things have already gotten. However it’s clear things are already pretty fucking bad as the US constitution and infrastructure failed to stop an insurrectionist getting power.

part of me is wondering if this isn't a sounding board by trump to see if they'll toe the line. (They'll toe the line because they're cucks who like to watch.)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Please make it stop

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It's not started yet!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

It started a very long time ago. What hasn't started yet is enough people figuring that out.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 hours ago