EFF sent out a campaign to their mailing list this morning about how banning it is a bad move for free speech and a better option would be to create actual data privacy laws that companies have to follow to do business in the US, but of course that would just put more money in politicians pockets to ensure it never sees the light of day.
I don’t use the platform so I’m not as familiar to if this is general nationalist issue or about specific practices in TikTok. I do think this is a slippery slope, though. Im afraid our elected officials are just too far behind on Technology to look at the broader issues on privacy and technology - this might pass simply because they can slap “not US = bad” on a campaign bus. It likely will boost VPN usage and/or drive people to less mature and even less privacy concerned services.
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As a conservative I generally hate the idea of Chinese software collecting all our national selfie secrets, but I hate the idea of banning companies even more.
If there’s a problem about national security as it relates to Chinese social media, we need to address that with education not banning apps.
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Yah, this is very much politicians being terrified of how much TikTok undermines the narratives they want to play to.
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It’s just part of the US government’s constant obsession with controlling the internet. They managed to make it sound legit this time due to anxiety around the CCP, but it’s not going to end at TikTok.
Basically since Tik Tok launched, literally all I’ve ever seen from everyone regardless of age or political affiliation is that it needs to be blocked since it’s a data mining machine for the CCP. Now that it’s actually happening, everyone is saying the opposite, that we need to keep it, even though the data mining for the CCP is still happening. What the fuck is actually going on?
It’s probably not a data mining machine for china, they’ve done a fair bit to divest them selves from china at this point. If the CCP wanted to data mine Americans they can just buy that information from data brokers.
I suspect the main reason so many establishment politicians are terrified of it is because of how it suggest content.
Because there is very little direct user input on what it shows, It tends to spin people off in to communities and places people wouldn’t normally end up in. Trends there also tend to spread fast and unpredictably, most people won’t know about a trend until it shows up in their feed, making it difficult to monitor by a third party.
It can really throw a wrench in political messaging when you can’t be sure what narratives and ideas your constituents have been exposed to. These issues come from social media generally, but most big social media platforms are a lot less volatile in the trends, are easier to monitor, and are less likely to send people off in to spaces that they wouldn’t normally be exposed to.
I suspect the main reason so many establishment politicians are terrified of it is because of how it suggest content.
I’m not convinced the politicians even have a clue what the app is, let alone how it serves content. To me, it seems like they really just want to keep data out of the hands of the CCP. The bill itself doesn’t state that TikTok is banned - only that ByteDance needs to divest it to keep operating it in the US.
everybody is pro capitalism until someone else beats them.
The people that complain that anything from China is a spyware product are the very same people that use sites like Facebook and Google, that are technically American/Western spyware.
I have a feeling that this was never about the CCP and that it is all racially-motivated.
From a European perspective I can only say that the US is as bad as China in terms of privacy violations (probably even worse). The whole Snowden and NSA scandal really broke any trust in nations or corporations to respect anyone’s privacy. I want to see how the US stops spying on everyone and regulates its own companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft. I get that banning tiktok is done out of competition over information etc. But the US certainly has no right to claim moral high ground or argue in favor of trying to protect anyone.
Sounds like a good move, that ticktock voiceover voice is like nails on a chalkboard.
