Investing in education is counter to the clear goals of the USA. Smart people would revolt, protest,and you know, hold companies and billionaires accountable. Uneducated people are often poor, can’t afford to fight back and are scared they will lose what little they have.

At some point we need all to fight back, but it might be too late. And worse, too few will join in out of fear of death.

Looking at things pragmatically widespread education of the population takes time and simply won't take for some people. There are folks today complaining that "they don't teach taxes in school". These people have a problem filling out a 1040EZ. Not exactly encouraging.

At the same time Tic Tok represents a single vector for current or potential foreign propaganda and intelligence gathering targeting the American public. Opportunities to nip a single bud (so to speak) are few and far between and probably won't be possible in the near future.

TL;DR - The "sell or ban" is a short term measure that won't take a lot of time, education is a long term measure that takes years.

If people can pick apart China's propaganda it means they can pick apart US propaganda, too.

Can't have that.

I have to tell you, I know many intelligent people that have succumbed to propaganda, and outrage porn addiction. I see it continue to happen on all sides of the political isle. (This isn't a both sides kind of statement, simply acknowledgement that the same tactics work on our brain, indifferent of political ideology.)

Whether they are hooked on the dopamine rush of rage baiting up votes, likes or comments; or only seeing everything in the world through a myopic lens of negativity, it has captured many of my friends and family, including myself for a time.

For some their drug is Fox News, others it's Reddit, Facebook or TikTok, the results are often the same.

I have yet to figure out a manner in which to communicate with individuals who spend considerable amounts of time in echo chambers, constantly having their personal beliefs reinforced. Evasion of cognitive dissonance and social conflict are very powerful psychological motivations. I wish I knew the solution.

Well, of course. They aren't banning Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. That's exactly how they want it.

What do you think billionaires are bribing congress for? Regulatory capture keeps all the competitors out. Whereas actually fixing the problem of social media brainwashing would cost them money.

mimes eating popcorn, while pointing to overlayed captions, with a Taylor Swift song playing in the background

It's not even "banning tik-tok". It's "separate your interests, or we block your product".

Which isn't exactly something that we haven't seen before in the U.S. and it for sure isn't anything new in China where plenty of services, games....etc are blocked with "Chinese only" versions of those services.

I don't like TikTok, but I do take issue with the government deciding what is and isn't available to me.

Except they would be ignoring all the other shitty social networks but it's a start.

what did tiktok do to deserve being banned, and why is it okay for other companies to do that?

You need to fix voting in congress first. The reason riders get put in is because some small bills that are of no interest to some in congress would never make it because they’d never get enough votes to pass. Of course the system got abused to hell with poison pills and shitty bills that are crammed into popular legislation to make it hard to pass or make good legislation pass shitty laws.

So yeah, split the bills. But make these clowns vote on everything.

This was a separate bill. Til Tok, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel were all separate. They were brought to the floor at the same time, but they could’ve all been voted on differently