Comment by glimshe
2 months ago
I can no longer send money to the EFF due to their obvious misreading of the situation. They will lose $100s/year from me, I hope it was worth it. Clearly, a naive take that doesn't understand the nuances related to Tiktok's situation.
Tiktok can still exist and keep showing their garbage to Americans, but it can't do so while being owned by a foreign adversary that attacks us almost continuously.
Sure, they can still buy our information elsewhere, but this is like saying I shouldn't put a lock on my door because thieves can break in through other means. Just check the looting happening in Los Angeles as a result of the reduction in the barriers for theft. Cost matters and if we increase the costs for China's data theft, their ability to steal from us will be reduced.
Yet when Europeans feel the same way about American manipulative social media and the US sees it as targeting its tech industry, you don’t see a bias? Are you OK with EU banning Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, too, because it goes against its own citizens rights and safety? Or, following your logic, should we demand they are sold to European owners?
Why do you think it’s YOU who decides to be the gatekeeper on all that data and no one else?
You see the double standards here? The hypocrisy?
You can demand whatever you desire from your government. It's your country.
Can you expand and on this? Do you think EU should force every successful US company to divest their EU branches. I do not know where I stand on this but you seem to have a clear idea on this..
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I feel that Europe has exactly that very right, as I support our right to exorcise control of the CCP from TikTok and/or shut it down. I completely understand why they would.
As a European, I am 100% ok with EU banning Facebook and other large advertisement funded platforms.
When GDPR was created there was a huge wave of people arguing that Facebook and other similar platforms would withdraw from EU. That did not happen, but if it had it would have been perfectly fine. Instead most American companies decided to create EU specific version of their platforms in order to comply with GDPR.
The next wave of privacy protecting regulations will likely recreate similar reactions. Those companies that want to stay in EU will comply, and those who don't will withdraw and give space to new ones. The trend of moving to national platforms/cloud providers has already started and been going on fairly strong in my country, especially from government organization and defense adjacent companies.