Technology

Several years ago at this point, Congress passed a bill, and that bill was signed into law by the President. What that law says, is that TikTok cannot continue under Chinese ownership. Byte Dance either have to sell the American video app business so that it is controlled by Americans, or they have to shutdown Tiktok.

Byte Dance did not sell the business, so under the law TikTok has to shutdown. This law was lawyered all the way to the supreme court, and the court said it's a valid law, and must be followed.

Despite all of these facts, the law is not actually being followed. And Tiktok is still operating in the United States. There is no legally valid reason for it to do so. President Trump has issued extension after extension, even though he has no legal authority to do so.

The latest here is the top law enforcement officer in the US telling the app stores, "yes we know it's illegal to keep Tiktok in your app store, but I am pinky promising we won't go after you."

Well, I mean that was proven in the prohibition era. Alcohol was illegal, and thus you could be arrested for having it.

And yet, the task force to enforce these rules was like 1 agent per every 500,000 citizens. So "super secret" speakeasies were EVERYWHERE in those days. So common that drunks would knock on random peoples doors, and home owners would instinctively yell "THIS ISN'T A SPEAKEASY!!!" and the drunk would go knock on the next door. It was said you only had to knock on 20-30 doors depending on the city, before you happened upon a secret speakeasy.

The head of the task force said New Orleans was the easiest to find alcohol, having just flown into the airport, he said it took about 30 seconds before he got into a cab, and was IMMEDIATELY offered booze.

If a law is a law, but it's not being enforced, is it really a law?

It can be hard to guess who to bribe, or how big each bribe should be?