cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12876226
The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.
US officials have cited the widespread commercial availability of US citizens’ data as another source of national security risk. The US government and other domestic law enforcement agencies are also known to have purchased US citizens’ data from commercial data brokers.
I agree that would be problematic.
However I’m not willing to allow the government to ban a social media platform that a lot of people enjoy and rely on for community building (or even their livelihoods, in a lot of creators’ cases) on a “what if”.
Think about the precedent this sets. What could it be used on next?
In case I’m being downvoted because you think I’m worried about a slippery slope for no reason, I’ll link the full text of the bill here.
The process is basically that the president determines that an app is an issue, notifies Congress (who does not need to give approval), then within a certain time period the foreign owner of the all must divest ownership or it would become illegal to distribute that app.
There are definitions laid out in the text. I see nothing that would stop them from banning foreign news sources or potentially foreign shopping platforms except for the clause about “permits a user to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content”, which could be broadly interpreted.
Do you really want to give the executive branch basically unchecked power to limit our access to voices from outside the country?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text?format=txt&r=1&s=1