A Federal TikTok Ban is a 'Misguided Detour' from Doing What’s Needed to Protect People’s Privacy and Safeguard National Security
A Federal TikTok Ban is a 'Misguided Detour' from Doing What’s Needed to Protect People’s Privacy and Safeguard National Security
On Tuesday, the Senate passed a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest its holdings of the popular social-media site or face an effective ban in the United States. The White House has indicated that President Biden will sign the legislation, which – after failing to move ...
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“If lawmakers want to rein in the harms of social-media platforms, targeting just one under the guise of national security ignores an entire industry predicated on surveillance capitalism. Like all popular platforms — including those that Meta and Google own — TikTok collects far too much user data. But banning a single platform will not address the privacy problem that’s rotting the core of the entire tech industry.
If domestic social media is collecting dangerous amounts of personal info about Americans, then foreign social media under who are subject to the laws of adversarial nation-states should be seriously concerning.
The matter of domestic social media will have to be addressed by a completely different law because it cannot be addressed by a law similar to this new one. People who bring up domestic social media in discussions of this law are completely missing the point.
From what I have seen, most people who object to a federal tiktok ban oppose it because they do not want the US government to censor the internet. I think privacy is brought up as a justification of the ban, and so opponents of the ban argue that it is selective to only focus on the app that is controlled by an adversarial country. I see the ban as addressing a symptom of weak privacy laws instead of addressing the root issue/cause. If privacy were actually taken serious by our government and not enforced selectively, then objections would be a lot less.
I've seen that too. But they're mistaken. "Censoring the internet" is not what this law does. That's hyperbole not based on any reasonable interpretation of the actual law.
Don't misunderstand me; this is not a good law. Nobody should be happy about it. But it is prudent, wise and perhaps even necessary. Refusing to acknowledge this while ignoring that actual 1st amendment concerns that this law will be challenged on does not help your argument.