Comment by insane_dreamer

It's not theater.

It's about having an adversarial entity -- one with whom the US could be at war with one day -- have control over a social media network that is highly pervasive in US society. It's not about harvesting the data. It's about having the ability to subtly manipulate public opinion through control of the algorithm that determines what comes up on people's feeds.

Yes, foreign adversaries can run TV ads like anyone else, or have their people on social media to try to sway the conversation (there's even a name for these people in China - "wumao"). I'm sure there's some people working for the CCP on this thread. But control of the network is a whole other level of influence -- orders of magnitude greater.