#if Biden is so powerless and he can't do anything then there's no point in him being president right?

[fromtheseventhhell]

"But what's going to happen if Trump gets into office???" He's gonna do the exact same things that Biden is currently doing and spineless liberals who have been defending him like they're getting paid for it are only going to have an issue cause it's the "bad" party doing it

[blizzardfluffykpop]

You guys know that's not just what the bill is about right? While, yes it bans tiktok effective immediately if the bill passes- which it is nowhere near the banning of tiktok yet. (Thankfully). The RESTRICT act is gonna fuck every social media platform.

You know guys know this is more than just about banning TikTok right? It's not called the banning TikTok bill it's called the RESTRICT act. It's to restrict communication. Although, it is nowhere near passing. This is going to fuck every social media platform.

You remember the bill they passed after 9/11 the Patriot Act, well imagine that for the internet. It's not about banning TikTok it's about controlling the media (so we can't see what's going on in real time), so we the people cannot have contact with one another. It's about restricting our communication so we cannot ban together. They realized when (majority of kpop fans) band together to make sure no one showed up on Juneteenth in Tulsa to Trump's rally, that the ants were outsmarting the grasshoppers.

Because when people ban together- and realize we're the ones in control- the government gets scared. And they grasp at every last straw, doing anything in their power to make sure we can't do anything to them.

Let me draw back to the second point that it's nowhere near the banning. For a federal bill, it has to go through the initial committee talks, which we are currently in. Then, it has to pass the house with a majority vote 218/435 If it makes it past the house, it has to go through the senate a 51/100 majority to pass. Then if Biden decides he likes everything in the bill, (he can veto parts of it and send it back), he can pass it. But lets say the 'blue' president vetoes it. Well, then it goes back to both the house & senate. Where if they are successful, 356/535 people need to vote to override the veto. Of course, after that there is many ways to overthrow both of them if Biden decides to veto. How it's looking it does not look like Biden will pass it. And getting a 2/3 majority will be difficult so we have hope.

Please don't worry too much. Don't let the anxiety eat you alive over it. We have power to call our representatives and talk about the RESTRICT act and tell them if they don't vote the way we want. We will vote their opponent in. That terrifies them, and the next best thing to do is vote. If we all turn out and vote them out, we will be okay. Yes, it's kind of powerless, but it's the best we can do at the moment. If we protest, we get felonies, you can't vote if you have a felony. Do not protest this, that's exactly what they want. Please do your best to stay calm about this.

Lastly, my last point; how it's going to fuck every social media platform. First, they are going after TikTok because it's ran by China (it's actually ran majorly on American soil). But because of how the bill is worded it can take down every social media because it's meant to restrict the people from talking. If they decide tomorrow, (after the bill is passed) they don't like Facebook, they can shut it down. With no prior warning. Anyone with more than 1 million followers is not allowed/shut down. They've known for a long time that each social media owns your data. After all, they were lobbied and bought by Meta, they know on a basis level how it all works. They're not concerned about that; they're concerned that they don't own and access your data at all times.

Say if you continue to use TikTok after the ban, your VPN fails one time, they'll send police to your house and charge you with a crime. I don't know how extensive they're going to go because I don't feel like reading 52 pages worth a bill. But just know if they can they'll have you in jail faster than you can 'fuck'.

Do you remember watching Incognito movie? Or reading 1984? Yeah, if this passes, they'll know when you access social media. They'll know everything; from what you post to what you like. It's terrifying but it's a reality we must realize before we let it dream of passing the House of Representatives.

Anyways, I really wish not to invoke fear with all I've talked about. Because we have a long way to go before it needs to be worried about worse. It has to pass 2 groups of people and the democrat president to make it into law. While it is not out of the realm of possibility, it is not certain. Please do not lose hope.

Yes, it may be a useless social media platform to some. But it's where a majority of the American public gets their news. It's unbiased, it's live, it's everywhere. It's the eyes of the people, and if we lose it, we lose more than we are capable of losing.

There is a vast more I can talk about on this whole thing. But I agree with everything OP talked about. They brought up some amazing points. But I wanted to draw all of our attention to the real antithesis of our problems. Please, do not worry, do not panic, it'll be okay. And if not now, maybe in the future. Do not lose hope, we the people still hold a great power over these representatives, let's use it. Let's call them, visit their houses, annoy the hell out of them until they decide it's no longer worth it.

Raise hell my friends, make them regret introducing this bill to the House.

i think any conversation regarding banning tiktok that insists tiktok is actually a force for good misses the point

it doesn't matter if tiktok is the next library of alexandria or if it sucks shit, the problem is that the US government shouldn't have the authority to limit americans' access to the internet so dramatically. the problem is other social media corporations lobbying to ban their opponents. the problem is pretending data harvesting is just fine as long as we're the ones doing it, diverting attention away from how companies like facebook have already harvest and sold way more data than tiktok could ever dream of collecting for the chinese government.

[alwek]

also i. like. i just don’t understand exactly What they’re so mad over??? that… biden is president? he’s been president we can’t change that til next year. and he likely WILL lose a lot of votes because of him supporting the genocide. what do they want us to do until then though?? like i just don’t get what they’re directing their anger at here

They seem mostly angry at their perception of complacency in the American people.

These folk are very rightfully angry that Palastine is in its last legs. No governments have been doing anything to stop it for the 70 or so years it's been going, and with the sociatal climate of the last few years, people are just snapping.

They want someone, ANYONE, to point the finger at to blame for all the shit going on, and when they find something to latch onto, it becomes everything. They start losing sight of the greater picture, trying to solve a problem in front of them that's connected to something off to their left, that's connected to something behind them, that's connected to something burried 80 feet underground. They focus on whats in front so hard they neglect everything else needs to be looked at at the same time. They start blaming entire groups for things. Which should go without saying, is not a good thing to do in most context.

Nuance gets lost in their rightful anger at everything, as they try and fail to make any visible change, because they don't get that the change they want simply CAN'T be done in what amounts to overnight. Not without a lot of people coming together all at once to burn a lot of things down.

Impatients, rage, sorrow, powerless feelings. They make people do stupid shit.

I probably got a bit too aggressive with it, though. Admittedly, I'm not the best at keeping that one down yet

[a-girl-called-bob]

I mean, they never said Biden wasn't useless. Just that useless is better than actively, mask-off malicious. They also never said Biden cared about us. Just that the alternative, someone acticely committed to malice, would be worse. I personally wouldn't call pointing that out 'dicksucking'.

Also this post makes several really, really key errors in understanding the legislative system and what the president can actually, like, do.

1.) Most of these bills are on the state level. Biden's condemnation would be a nice, yet completely perfunctory and powerless gesture. He can't legally affect the goings on of state lawmakers in the least. If he tried, his ass'd be taken to the 6-3 supreme court faster than you can blink. Trump got away with state intervention because he largely had the courts on his side even before getting Kavanaugh and Coney Barret.

2.) Those bills coming through the federal House? They're not going anywhere. Republicans know it, when they introduce them. They're specifically intended to make you and me afraid, and to energize those that would slaughter us, but they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of making it through the senate. Furthermore, until they pass the senate - which they can't - Biden can't do anything about them materially because of the doctrine of separation of powers. Until he gets the chance to veto something, the most he can do according to the constitution is give unnecessary advice.

3.) Do you remember the 2016-2018 cycle? If I recall correctly, Republicans controlled all three major points of power federally - the house, senate, and presidency. They were about as efficient as Dems are now. See, political strategy writ large is so deeply structured around reaction that nobody knows what the fuck they're doing when they're actually the ones in charge. That was during a session that *wasn't* in deadlock, like the last three functionally have been. Granted as well, they didn't fully have the courts on their side as they do now, nor did they have the singular drive and focus at oppressing queer people that they do now.

I understand your rage. You have every right to be angry that the system is so completely fuckin stacked against us. And maybe you're right that we need to organize action outside of the system to try to affect any real change for the better. But why don't you riddle me this? Consider two scenarios, one with a liberal/democrat government and one with a conservative/republican government. Which do you think would be more likely to accede to the demands of protesters, strikers, and direct actors, and which do you think would be more likely to hand the cops AKs and tell them to exterminate us all?

Plus, y'know. Election day is one out of 730. You can do something you think is more productive 729 of those days, so long as you take an hour on that last day to keep republicans out of office. Seems reasonable to me.

Never forget all of these fascist bills trying to publicly eliminate trans people are being passed under a Democratic president who is completely fucking dead at the wheel and really couldn't give less of a shit about it even if his rotted-out brain still possessed object permanence