Comment by ElevenLathe
10 hours ago
We just don't care. We know the all the American TLAs are on our phones, so what's a few more Chinese ones? It's a problem for Washington war wonks to freak out about, not teens in Omaha.
10 hours ago
We just don't care. We know the all the American TLAs are on our phones, so what's a few more Chinese ones? It's a problem for Washington war wonks to freak out about, not teens in Omaha.
Those teens in Omaha will eventually become voting adults in Omaha and then will eventually come into positions of leadership in both the public and private sector. I can guarantee that 0% would appreciate being blackmailed or unknowingly used as pawns in spycraft. Teens in Omaha may not understand the full scope of what it means.
Can you definitively point to something TikTok collects that can be used for blackmail that isn't collected by any other social media app?
No, they all collect the same level of blackmailable stuff. They shouldn't ban TikTok, they should ban all data collection and get rid of the third party doctrine altogether. But China is sort of an active adversary to the US right now so banning it is a heavy handed method that will probably mostly work to prevent mass indoctrination from a rival and also prop up ailing US social media companies. The US govt wants mass indoctrination and blackmail material on people, it just doesn't want China to have it.
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Why is it okay that it's collected by any?
And furthermore, why is it okay that it's collected AND owned by a company based in a country not subject to the rule of law?
"Facebook does it too" isn't a reason not to be worried about TikTok.
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Hopefully we'll ban those too. The first step is always the hardest, so you should always look for the easiest path (which in this case is banning a foreign government from controlling a social media app).
Teens don't understand the full scope of what anything means: that's practically the definition of teenager.
Oh we care. I care way, way less about an American company with my data over the CCP.
I've heard it put that, if you're not a government official, having your own government spy on you could be more consequential than a foreign one.
Lots of people think this way and, to be honest, it speaks more to the inability of the thinker to consider the realities of the US's current relationship with China. A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022.
It's easy to have a gut reaction that your own government has a greater impact on your life than a foreign one, but that does not reflect the reality that 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has; and 3) the US and China are going to war one day, and China might win.
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Why?
This is like saying that you don't care about free speech because you don't have anything to say right now. It's no where close to being a justification.