As someone in the US who has had their private data leaked multiple times (ive lost count) and is extremely careful when browsing you tube as to not be drawn into a conspiracy ridden rabbit hole, I’m not sure what the point of this tik tok ban is. To me tik tok is social media business as usual. If congress is going to go this hard on a social media company and privacy concerns they should be doing this with all the other companies that pry into our private lives and try their best to manipulate us as well (car makers, appliance manufactures, phone makers, wearbales, ect…) otherwise to me this comes across as the US congress extorting a single company to make billionaires richer. It has been shown time and time again that even US based social media companies are vulnerable to influencing conspiracy theorists and swaying the votes of thousands of people.I feel like we are at the pinnacle of technological ignorance here. Thoughts?
Banning TikTok would be as good as banning Facebook, Instagram or XTwitter, by that I mean it would be a net gain for society as a whole. But you have to ban them all, without discriminating based on which nation they originated.
But this is not the case here, this is the US congress enacting barriers towards foreign competitors, just like they did with steel, sugar and cars (ever wondered why you can’t buy one of those little European cars in America?).
This TikTok bullshit is Huawei all over again. It’s not to protect “national security” or “the children”, the Huawei ban was all about protecting the business of American companies during the transition from 4G to 5G.
Huawei was sanctioned for violating sanctions, and creating fraudulent financial statements. It is still protectionism, but they absolutely fucked around and got caught.