President Biden signed a bill that states if TikTok doesn't cut ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance over the next nine months to a year, it will be banned in the U.S.
Seriously. The real solution is comprehensive privacy protection and consumer information export controls for all companies operating within the US.
This whole thing is just going to give an American company the capability to use Tik Tok to spy on people and control information, which is barely better.
And then they’ll likely sell the data to China anyway. Data brokers exist and make a fuck ton of money on us.
So you would be cool with ISIS rolling out a social media app? All profits go directly to making explosives. All user data, including biometrics is logged to help ISIS plan future terrorist attacks on American soil.
Edit: sorry I misread what you are saying. But still, idk how you prevent China from using our data when that’s the whole point of China owning TikTok in the first place. A forced sale or ban is the only option.
That’s an extreme example of course but I don’t think you can just ignore who makes products and where your money (and data in this case) is going.
And yes, I don’t like American social media companies either. But you will remember that Facebook got into a ton of trouble for selling data to the Russians via Cambridge Analytica. At least we can try to prevent American companies from leaking data to hostile parties. Meanwhile we KNOW that TikTok is giving our data to the Chinese government and forcing a sale of the American branch of TikTok is the only thing we can do about it.
The Chinese government already has our data thanks to Facebook, Google, and reddit (and just about every other free service). This ban (“forced sale” that will never happen because the US is only 10% of their revenue) is to limit our communication, not to save our data. They could pass legislation to protect our data across the board, but they (the house) have too much invested in meta and them to do anything to harm their bottom line.
This ban only became the biggest most important thing for the government to do after we all started learning what Israel was doing in Gaza. Our house of reps is primarily owned by Israel and private corporations, and Tiktok is a driving force for change. It’s getting more young people to vote than anything before. And all they want is representation that actually represents, rather than cater to bribery. This idea is terrifying to those currently in power, because they’ve enjoyed doing almost nothing good for the American people for 4 decades while getting stupid rich at the same time.
I understand a lot of people knew what was happening to the Palestinians for years, but that was information the US was happy to keep to itself. Tiktok made it super clear to the rest of us what was actually going on.
I’m not trying to say data privacy isn’t important. It is, but the ship has sailed on that problem. We can do things to limit the damage to future users, but everyone that’s already been on the Internet… 🤷. This is an issue they have with US citizens learning about all the shady underhanded shit they’ve been doing for decades. If they were truly worried about our data privacy, meta and Google would be their first and primary targets, rather than the primary beneficiaries from a sale (because a sale would immediately ruin it) or ban.
And finally (sorry, I know this is long), I’ve seen more anti Chinese information on Tiktok than anywhere else. If they were in control of what’s being shown (the government’s other big excuse here), you’d think they’d censor their past and current atrocities from being known. Everything I see on Tiktok doesn’t serve China at all. In fact if we’re finally able to vote out the dinosaurs and money whores that currently run things, then it may actually hurt China in the long run.
Thanks for reading my ranting Ted talk. Sorry about that!
This won’t stop china from spying on us, they are already buying all they want from Meta, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft, they don’t need Tiktok to do this. Also, the chineese company that “owns” tiktok only owns about 40% of the company.
It was never about American’s privacy, it was because the government apparently can’t control the narrative in the app while they can with the other one’s which is why they are trying to force tiktok to sell to an American company or gtfo. I have seen news faster and with more accuracy in the past 6 months on tiktok than even here, and when I try to see it on the media it’s either only one sided or completely absent (the farmers protests in Brussels and France is a great example, the zionist message in america and the college protests is another)
Seriously. The real solution is comprehensive privacy protection and consumer information export controls for all companies operating within the US.
This whole thing is just going to give an American company the capability to use Tik Tok to spy on people and control information, which is barely better.
And then they’ll likely sell the data to China anyway. Data brokers exist and make a fuck ton of money on us.
So you would be cool with ISIS rolling out a social media app? All profits go directly to making explosives. All user data, including biometrics is logged to help ISIS plan future terrorist attacks on American soil.
Edit: sorry I misread what you are saying. But still, idk how you prevent China from using our data when that’s the whole point of China owning TikTok in the first place. A forced sale or ban is the only option.
That’s an extreme example of course but I don’t think you can just ignore who makes products and where your money (and data in this case) is going. And yes, I don’t like American social media companies either. But you will remember that Facebook got into a ton of trouble for selling data to the Russians via Cambridge Analytica. At least we can try to prevent American companies from leaking data to hostile parties. Meanwhile we KNOW that TikTok is giving our data to the Chinese government and forcing a sale of the American branch of TikTok is the only thing we can do about it.
The Chinese government already has our data thanks to Facebook, Google, and reddit (and just about every other free service). This ban (“forced sale” that will never happen because the US is only 10% of their revenue) is to limit our communication, not to save our data. They could pass legislation to protect our data across the board, but they (the house) have too much invested in meta and them to do anything to harm their bottom line.
This ban only became the biggest most important thing for the government to do after we all started learning what Israel was doing in Gaza. Our house of reps is primarily owned by Israel and private corporations, and Tiktok is a driving force for change. It’s getting more young people to vote than anything before. And all they want is representation that actually represents, rather than cater to bribery. This idea is terrifying to those currently in power, because they’ve enjoyed doing almost nothing good for the American people for 4 decades while getting stupid rich at the same time.
I understand a lot of people knew what was happening to the Palestinians for years, but that was information the US was happy to keep to itself. Tiktok made it super clear to the rest of us what was actually going on.
I’m not trying to say data privacy isn’t important. It is, but the ship has sailed on that problem. We can do things to limit the damage to future users, but everyone that’s already been on the Internet… 🤷. This is an issue they have with US citizens learning about all the shady underhanded shit they’ve been doing for decades. If they were truly worried about our data privacy, meta and Google would be their first and primary targets, rather than the primary beneficiaries from a sale (because a sale would immediately ruin it) or ban.
And finally (sorry, I know this is long), I’ve seen more anti Chinese information on Tiktok than anywhere else. If they were in control of what’s being shown (the government’s other big excuse here), you’d think they’d censor their past and current atrocities from being known. Everything I see on Tiktok doesn’t serve China at all. In fact if we’re finally able to vote out the dinosaurs and money whores that currently run things, then it may actually hurt China in the long run.
Thanks for reading my ranting Ted talk. Sorry about that!
But it’s cool to hate TikTok though
This won’t stop china from spying on us, they are already buying all they want from Meta, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft, they don’t need Tiktok to do this. Also, the chineese company that “owns” tiktok only owns about 40% of the company.
It was never about American’s privacy, it was because the government apparently can’t control the narrative in the app while they can with the other one’s which is why they are trying to force tiktok to sell to an American company or gtfo. I have seen news faster and with more accuracy in the past 6 months on tiktok than even here, and when I try to see it on the media it’s either only one sided or completely absent (the farmers protests in Brussels and France is a great example, the zionist message in america and the college protests is another)