[addcn]

I heard inside info from the hill. Apparently a few weeks ago when TikTok got thousands of kids to call their congresspeople, it tipped a ton of the people on the fence to the “hell yes” category. Many offices got more calls than they do in a month that one day. TikTok showed how powerful it is, right there, right then.

If China / TikTok hadn’t overplayed the hand, they wouldn’t lose this weapon. Now they likely will (good thing)

[wumeow]

I still think it’s funny that the notification they pushed said “your government” instead of “our” or “the”.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/7/24093308/tiktok-congress-b...

[Simulacra]

I worked in a Hill office and heard most of the votes were decided long ago. Meta did a full court press, deeply entwined with the government, to push TikTok out. Expect Meta to make a play for TikTok.

[dralley]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/krishnamoorthi-gallagher-tiktok...

> "Most of these push notifications went to minor children, and these minor children were flooding our offices with phone calls," Krishnamoorthi told CBS News. "Basically they pick up the phone, call the office and say, 'What is a congressman? What is Congress?' They had no idea what was going on."

> The congressman said these concerns and the app's access to young children's data are driving factors creating the bipartisan support of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," a bill he co-sponsored. The bill calls for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or the app will face restrictions.

> "This is exactly the reason why so many of our colleagues voted for the bill. They don't want a foreign adversary controlling social media apps using geolocation to target minor children to call members of Congress or interfere in our elections. This is exactly the reason why this particular legislation is necessary now," Krishnamoorthi said.

[roshin]

If those voters put their money where their mouth is, and vote out the incubates, who went against their wishes, then the next congress will be full of new people.

[Cody-99]

Except the kids aren't voters. The story I read said many were kids who didn't even know what congress was.

[nostrademons]

The depressing part is that U.S. government structure and the 3 branches of government are part of the 4th/5th grade curriculum. This implies that the (presumably pre-teen/teenaged) kids who called Congress had already passed that part of their schooling, and so they're going to grow up into age 18+ voters that still don't know what Congress is.

[aiforecastthway]

I recently had a conversation with a 33 year old who I would consider both intelligent and well-educated, including some college. His uncle is a lawyer (I met him at some family+friends party or another) who he spent a lo of time around.

I mentioned something about a SCOTUS opinion and he was very surprised that the court published its opinions. We delved a bit further and he also didn't realize that you could read bills or laws or executive orders.

I have never been more alarmed or scared about the future of our democracy.

[vsnf]

Yes, I have similar experiences with people in the same age bracket. I'm not sure what the root problem is, I'm sure it's myriad in its origins, but there's some combination of individuals being fully checked-out of the democratic process taking the structure for granted and letting it kind of wash over them, and also a systematic failure of education which has completely failed to impart certain vital aspects of knowledge.

Like you I would classify most of these people as intelligent, and although literally qualified, (possession of university degrees at various levels), they are actually completely uneducated.

[EasyMark]

As a counterpoint, I know a lot of people from that age group who do know a lot about government and have intelligent conversations about it. Similar as your situation, I mostly hang out with either musicians or engineers or both as that includes my major hobbies and work crew.

[pfannkuchen]

Well, before everything went on the internet it was much harder to find published opinions and laws as they happened. In the 90s when the guy was a child he probably only had exposure to historical documents, not current ones. I actually don’t know where you would have found the full text of those pre internet. The public library? I also found it kind of novel to read current court opinions not too long ago. Government function stuff seems like the kind of thing you learn about as a kid and don’t really update actively.

[asadotzler]

Nah, I grew up in the 80s and 90s and you could learn a lot from newspapers, magazines, television, or a trip to the library where you could get plenty more. There's no excuse for believing the stuff was secret. Not easy to get, sure, a trip downtown, maybe, but "secret from the press" for example, that's ridiculous for anyone that's ever turned on the nightly news channel in the 70s, 80s, or 90s where I have actual pre-internet experience. Also, by the early 90s you could get it all on the actual internet, pre-web, by going to a library with an internet connection and gopher. Bills, rulings, regulations, and other government publications could be found and accessed through Gopher directories maintained by government agencies, legislative bodies, and other organizations. Being away from all of this is OK if you at least know that it does in fact exist and other people use it. But believing that it doesn't exist, that government works in secret, that's just a busted education right there.

[nunez]

Government isn't something that people deal with in their daily lives outside of their municipal government offices, like the DMV.

Between that and daily life being a grind for most people, it is very understandable for someone to not know that the SCOTUS does these things.

Honestly, while everyone (myself included) should be more aware and involved in government, this blissful ignorance is a testament to the stability and freedoms offered by our government.

[lotsoweiners]

Which part is alarming, that they did not know that court opinions are published or that they aren’t reading them?

[asadotzler]

Not knowing they're public and published is alarming. I was reading this stuff on Gopher servers 35 years ago at the library. That was pre-web internet and it was plenty good for government documents.

[seanmcdirmid]

It didn’t really sink into my head until high school. I guess you have to have context or you are just learning facts to forget later.

[nunez]

Holy shit; imagine if people could vote via social media.

The youth vote would skyrocket.

[neuronexmachina]

> I heard inside info from the hill.

It was a fairly big story last month: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/07/tiktok-ban-congress-phone-c...

[addcn]

Didn’t realize. Just talked it through with a buddy a few weeks back.

[flandish]

All this situation reads to me is “US corps can’t compete, China ‘won’ that fight so now US corps have to pretend it’s a security risk and get it banned.”

There are other chinese apps. This doesn’t ban them.

It’s also snuck into an aid bill. A completely reprehensible act if ever there was one.

[mostlysimilar]

Social media platforms don't "win" on their own merits. They win due to chance network effects. TikTok isn't special, and it would likely cycle out of the public consciousness along with a new generation that picks the next hit network, like Facebook and Instagram.

[nirui]

I recently learned from a The Verge podcast that the U.S. has law in place to limit how many shares can be owned by a foreign shareholders if the company is a news/media company (??? Alert: I'm not so sure about the detail). Which is in fact a fairly common idea among the nations:

    > U.K. Moves to Bar Foreign State Ownership of Newspapers, a Blow to Telegraph Bid
    > https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/business/media/jeff-zucker-telegraph-delay.html

    as well as:

    > https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/68072

I guess it's too bad that the industry are calling this kind of service "Social Media".

(Of course, you might be thinking "Oh, social media is not newspaper or broadcast station"... well, the interpretation of law can be a spectrum sometimes. Also, now days people are reading (algorithmically recommended) news on those platforms instead of buying newspaper/radio)

It's quite funny. As a Chinese myself, I'm actually a little sympathetic towards TikTok in that IF they can survive outside the Communist Party umbrella, it will show the rest of Chinese entrepreneurs that pledging to the party is not essential. But, I guess apparently these entrepreneur needs to pick the right industry first.

[porknubbins]

This is what I have never understood about calling congress people. Why would they listen to a random person? If you have some clout or are an expert on a niche issue sure. But I just feel like if you’re a nobody why would they trust you.

[nostrademons]

They aggregate the responses and tally them up statistically. The assumption is that for every person who bothers to call in, 10+ people, perhaps even hundreds, feel the same way. (I assume they'd model based on the relative number of total calls across all issues vs. voters in the district). Then this becomes data for the representative to know how their constituents feel about the issue.

The rep isn't going to listen to you specifically - you get a form letter back (sometimes years later), and the only thing that matters is the issue and whether you're yay or nay. But because so few people call in, it makes your opinion (on that issue, at least) weight much more highly than the average voter.

[gretch]

Well because those constituents vote for them and they have to win elections. If they don't listen, they will literally be voted out by those same people (assuming there is significant volume)

[teamspirit]

I believe you're mistaken in thinking that calling your rep doesn't matter. They keep track of what their constituents call them about, totaling it up at the end of the week or month.

It's one of the ways they keep track of what their voters care about.

This was from a friend who interned there 20 years ago, things may have changed.

[grotorea]

I assume it's simply a matter of caring about voter opinions. The one that bothered to complain is presumed to represent the 1000s who care about the issue but not enough to call.

[underseacables]

Early in my career, I interned for a member of Congress. Calling your member of Congress does absolutely nothing. An intern, or a staff assistant, takes down your information and someone called a legislative correspondent responds to you, but signs the members name to the bottom of it.

[jltsiren]

I guess it's a feature of single-representative districts. Loud voices at the margins can matter, if losing a small number of votes may lose you the election.

The dynamics are different with proportional representation. You care more about keeping your core supporters happy, because the random people opposing something loudly will probably vote someone else anyway.

[flandish]

They won’t start listening until we remind them in ways they can actually relate to.

[underseacables]

That's not really heard on the Hill, that was in the news. Quite prominently.

[deadbolt]

It's so fucking awesome how when people actually reach out to Congress, asking them to not do something, Congress responds with "How dare you tell me how to do my job!", and does the opposite of what was requested. You can really feel the democracy at work.

I'm sure they were real annoyed receiving phone calls from normal people instead of just businesses trying to set up meetings for ~~bribes~~ campaign donations.

[analognoise]

Right? How dare those evil Communists insist we…call our representatives to let our voice be heard?

What a huge self-own.

[Osmium]

It's interesting that this analysis implies intentionality on behalf of TikTok, and does not allow for the case that its users genuinely enjoy the service and therefore do not want to see it banned.

[gretch]

> do not want to see it banned

It's not banned if they simply sell it.

Let's see if the same volume of users mobilize to call tiktok HQ to please sell it, because they want to keep using it

[toomuchtodo]

> users genuinely enjoy the service and therefore do not want to see it banned.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28133824

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135592

[asadotzler]

If users want to keep using it, let them advocate for Bytedance to sell Tiktok to a US company.