On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to effectively ban the social media site TikTok unless owner ByteDance, a Chinese company headquartered in the Cayman Islands, sells the platform.
Lawmakers fear the Chinese government could use TikTok to spread propaganda and collect a wide variety of data that could be potentially damaging to national security.
ByteDance says it operates independently from the Chinese government and even moved its headquarters from Hong Kong in the wake of a Beijing-imposed crackdown on free speech. It says data collected is not accessible to Chinese authorities.
U.S. critics of the proposed ban say Congress is scapegoating TikTok for largely unregulated practices widespread across social media. They point out that TikTok's data collection is no different from that of other social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. And they point out propaganda of various stripes, sponsored by various countries, is rampant on all these platforms. Why, they ask, should TikTok be singled out and how would its sale change anything?
The Senate has yet to act on the bill.
We want to know what you think. Are lawmakers right to push for ban if TikTok isn't sold? Are the fears surrounding the platform overblown? Would the sale of TikTok even make much of a difference?
Send your response (50 words maximum) to [email protected] by Wednesday, March 20. You can also mail your response to the Texarkana Gazette Friday Poll, at P.O. Box 621, Texarkana, TX 75504 or drop it off at our office, 101 E. Broad St, Texarkana, Ark. Be sure to include your name, address and phone number. We will print as many responses as we can in next Friday's paper.
Last Week: Fair Pay?
Last week's question was about a proposal to set the minimum wage for Arkansas state employees at $15 per hour. Do you support a $15 minimum wage for state employees while the minimum for other workers in the state is lower? Should the state's minimum wage be raised to $15 for all workers? Or do you think state workers should have the same $11 minimum wage as other workers?
I think all Arkansas workers should get $15.00 minimum wage. However, the state workers are run by the governor and she can approve this. Other workers wage is dictated by private businesses, that don't feel obligated to pay their workers a decent wage. Instead these businesses want to line their greedy pockets. So sad! -- R.K., Texarkana, Texas
From facebook.com/texarkanagazette
Raise it for everyone.
It's a nice gesture. $15 hr isn't going far.
15 for everyone. But do you expect the magas to play fair. I'm mean the magas literally are against any minimum wage increase For anyone ! They scream it will cause things to increase in price. But they will just blame Biden for that. Cause he controls prices of everything If they go up..
Or you could pack up and move to another nearby state that already pays $17/hr as starting pay working for McDonald's. Arkansas better wake up before their youth pack up and the best and brightest leave the state to survive.
Government efficiency and effectiveness isn't really tied to salary. Unless you cut the number of groups/people handling information, you're not going to produce a higher quality service. Based on how the pension system works, they're going to have to increase taxes in some way in order to continue funding the retirement system public employees get.
I'm not for $15 for everyone. If that's what you want to do for state jobs I'm okay with it. If someone wants to make more there's lots of opportunities to do so
It should be $15 for everyone!
She finally made a good decision.
The state's minimum wage should be raised to $15 for all workers. The AFL-CIO, Center for American Progress, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Economic Policy Institute, numerous other groups, and most other Americans (according to Pew Research Center) agree with me.