You're viewing a single thread.
As much as I don't like TikTok, I don't like the idea of the government censoring arbitrary apps under vague notions of "national security".
It would be one thing if they were passing legislation about surveillance in apps, but it's clearly not about that or 99% of American apps would be under the chopping block (they're selling data to arbitrary buyers, so the data can be obtained by "foreign adversaries" anyway). Instead, they're just handing the executive power to strongarm any app into American control, or lose the huge American market.
I feel like proponents of this are getting too distracted by their hatred of TikTok, and this nonsense about third spaces isn't helping. TikTok is just the beginning, and a convenient one because it's such a hot topic right now.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/congress-should-give-unconstitutional-tiktok-bans
It's because it actually is a security risk with the Chinese government having the ability to do who knows what with a frightening amount of data. There is also the option of selling the company to one that isn't related to the Communist Party government, but no one seems to be talking about that option.
The only slippery slope is more apps owned by a foreign government that is not exactly our friend.
If the app was owned by North Korea, would you be cool with it too?They aren't banning Instagram and Facebook.
If they were regulating Instagram and Facebook, I'd actually be happier about it. It's not like the US is some bastion of digital privacy, and TikTok is bad because the data use is unregulated. Our own wholesome homegrown data brokers spy on us just as much, and they too do who knows what with the data.
American data brokers are no better, and are happy to sell data to foreign powers. Biden had to make an executive order about it recently. Blatant privacy invasion has become a standard practice in the tech industry, and there are a million different companies trading your information around. That's the real issue at play here, and TikTok is just one of many fish in the sea. My data might even be more valuable to American companies than Chinese ones, because the American ones stand to exploit me for more profit. Or they'll sell it to government (s), which... Yeah.
And of course TikTok could be sold. That's exactly what I was talking about with strongarming—sell your platform to a corporation in our jurisdiction, or else we cut you off from a huge part of your userbase. It's not really an option, it's an ultimatum. It'd be one thing if we regulated the use of that data, but we don't really—we don't have meaningful data privacy laws here, at least not that apply in this circumstance. We're being spied on just as badly. Forcing them to move here would just mean American agencies and companies would have more control over the platform, and more access to the data it generates, neither of which they've built much trust in their ability to do ethically.