You literally cannot place a bet if you’re in Missouri. It’s because of Location Services on a mobile phone, and via IP address from a computer. My son lives in Kansas two blocks from the state line and he can make a bet at home using his laptop or phone. But if he walks to the nearest bar, which is in Missouri, he cannot make a bet either using his phone connecting via cellular signal, or using his laptop connecting via the establishment’s wifi.
Good point. I hadn’t considered that that particular bridge has already been crossed. Therefore any argument based on the difficulty of implementing the restriction has pretty much already been effectively countered.
Of course that depends 100% on the willingness of the app vendor to comply accurately with the restrictions. If they’re unreachable enough, they may not bother.
OTOH, as long as the apps are available only through the Google or Apple app stores, those two organizations have enough to lose that they will try very hard to police the apps.
At least until Elmo decides to open a Freedum! app store to accompany the newly Free!* Twitter with no moderation or enforcement of any kind.
* “Free” as in lack of controls or standards, not as in lack of cost.
My office is in Ohio, but our IP address shows Kentucky. Geo IP has a ways to go.
That’s really interesting. Can you use a proxy IP on your laptop to make it work (for those who don’t just have to walk two blocks)?
I do not know the answer to that question. I do know that, last fall, when I was on the road in a non-gambling state and wanted to place a bet, I used TeamViewer to remote into my desktop at home to place that bet. Which proved that I can lose money anywhere.
The House has voted to ban TikTok if it isn’t divested. Biden has said he would sign the bill. It’s unclear how quickly the Senate will act.
Ironically, Trump has flip flopped, and he is now against the ban. I have no delusions that he is doing this out of principle, other than the principle of doing what’s best for Trump.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/14/trump-tiktok-billionaire-donors-00146892
Will he be able to persuade enough Republican senators to kill the bill? My guess is probably not. I give it a 95% chance of passing.
For what it’s worth, I think trying to ban TikTok is overreacting. Is the danger level zero? No, but I think it’s very low. If the government is serious about it, they have other less well known but probably riskier targets they could go after, one of which I am also a customer of. I own a Boox e-reader, which is manufactured by a Chinese company. If the CCP wanted to, they could use it to steal my Google and Amazon password, monitor what I read, and so on. I did take the sensible risk of making a separate Google and Amazon account as a precaution, but I’m not up at night in fear that Xi Jinping is keeping track of how far along I am in my current re-reading of The Hobbit.
What does this tell me? That this whole thing is more of a show of “being tough on China” rather than trying to address any serious concerns.
The counterargument would be that they are less well known because they are used by fewer people, and thus have lower impact. It makes sense to go after the larger offenders first.
Also, to be clear, this bill does not actually single out TikTok. It goes after any “foreign-adversary controlled appliation.” There are several other social media sites I could see that would fall afoul of the law. It’s just that TikTok is by far the largest with international appeal.
Here’s the text of the law, and here’s Congress’s own summary.
All we need to do now is label Xitter a hostile foreign-controlled app and be done with Elmo.
I’m not a legal expert. Out of curiosity, do you (or anyone else who understands such matters) think this would affect Boox and their e-readers? Is their relative obscurity the only reason they haven’t been mentioned, or is this law something that wouldn’t apply to them?
I’d post a link to their site, but I’m not sure whether or not that’s allowed by board rules. Basically they are a Chinese company that makes premium e-ink devices (much better than the Kindle IMHO). They use android software, and most users here in the US (I have no idea what they have access to in China) log on to the Google play store, and then download apps like Kindle, Nook, whatever else to download their books, having to log in to the Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc. sites to do so.
In related news, Steven Mnuchin is interested in putting together a group of investors to purchase TikTok.
I was ambivalent about banning TikTok. All of a sudden I am against it if the donor class is seeing it as an opportunity for grift.
Every bit of legislation that affects any business is an opportunity for grift.
I’ve discovered so many of my current favourite new bands through the YouTube algorithm that I’m a convert.
If Trump is against the ban, that might increase his favorability rating among young folks-an area where Biden might not be doing as well. Maybe not a huge swath of voters, but every little bit helps (or hurts).
Whatever the reason he flip flopped, I’m sure it’s for the benefit of Trump, not because he’s a defender of free speech. None the less, if he’s able to get enough Republican senators to jump on board and stop this bill from becoming law, I agree that it will help him. As is, I never thought I’d be on the same side of a controversial issue as Trump, but here we are.