President Biden signed a bill that states if TikTok doesn't cut ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance over the next nine months to a year, it will be banned in the U.S.
And the fact that a foreign adversary obtained this information was very bad, agreed? Clearly, it makes sense to take steps to keep that kind of information out of adversarial hands.
The law affects social media apps based in North Korea, China, Iran, and Russia. These four countries are already restricted from participating in sensitive areas of the US economy, with forced sale being an option. The only really novel part of this law is applying such restrictions to software.
You're missing my point. The adversaries have many more avenues than just TikTok (like breaching the domestic companies that collect the data). The law is too specific and therefore does not actually protect us in any real way, at least not on a personal level.
Does it stop my data from getting to the CCP? Nope, so I would say it's too specific. The problem is not TikTok exclusively, the problem is that the data is collected and sold in the first place. This doesn't stop that.
Also, it leaves a bad taste when you say it was crafted to narrowly skirt the 1st amendment. That's not a good thing, so I'm not sure why you're trying to imply that it is.
No, but it does prohibit companies in those four sanctioned countries from operating social media apps in the US. The fact that it's not a perfect protection is no good reason not to do it. The fact that it was written with an eye towards the first amendment is not a valid criticism.