Comment by dbl000

I didn't see a sale of TikTok anywhere? The main point of issue I have with the bill is that the text of the bill [0] specifies that any company if it is owned by a "foreign adversary" (as defined by Congress) and the President deems it to be a threat will be forced to divest or stop participating in the American market.

Part of the core reason that TikTok didn't want to divest was that they had ownership of a damn good algorithm and didn't want to share it. It's not a big leap from this to banning other companies that might have competing algorithms that could eat into major US corporations. If Egypt designs a better X does Elon get to urge it's bad because it's a threat?

I also think it's a pretty badly written bill in general. The bill won't punish or ByteDance. It punishes the digital infrastructure companies like Apple, Google and Oracle who provide the ability to download the app or the database.

I'm not defending TikTok or claiming it's not an security threat. I just think that the bill is poorly written and doesn't deal with the actual root of the problem.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...