@rbreich because its China. As in China, Russia, Iran
They want to eat us & any remaining democracies left after Ukraine, US & Israel.
Their ultimate endgame.
@rbreich One would hope that companies based in your own country would have less interest in destroying democracy than the Chinese (or Russian, or Iranian... for that matter) government. Of course, there are exceptions, unfortunately, where autocratically run companies work on pulling the rug away from under our and their own feet by sabotaging democracy. So, yes, we should be concerned about all of them, but we should not be generally concerned more about those than about Chinese control.
@rbreich It’s the same as it was with the Shah of Iran or the President of South Vietnam. Bezos, Musk, Zuck, and the Koch brothers may be malefactors of great wealth, but they’re our #Malefactors of great wealth. We probably need to get past that.
@rbreich Banning tiktok is not a good idea because some people use it to make a career, much like with cryptocurrencies, which have a lot of phony investing sites but also allow for the successful recovery of cryptocurrency through [email protected]. However, they should take into account those whose livelihoods depend on TikTok revenue if they choose to outlaw the platform.
@rbreich Funny how people don't like the idea of China "manipulating" the US. Yet Americans are only too happy to be manipulated by #Israel (and local billionaires of course). Perhaps if the US adopted some of China's principles in governance (such as governing for the people rather than for a wealthy elite), it may be just as successful economically,
@rbreich the rest of the world worries about both.
Americans worry about both too imo. You guys are the only country where a dude leaked government spyware and went to literally one of the worst countries in the world for the rest of his life. That's kinda impressive.
@rbreich I’m much more worried about the latter. China has its own TikTok (Douyin) to worry about and Western social media websites openly admit that they sell all our data.
I could not find any evidence that Huawei devices spy on people, but I have loads and loads of evidence that Apple’s iPhones do. Both are manufactured in China, yet Huawei is singled out as “the bad guys”. What gives?
@rbreich Well, it's an election year, so you know they're going to try harder and harder to try to get it banned. That way we would turn to other forms of social media aside from TikTok. If they are really worried about national security, then you might as well shut everything down. You might as well get rid of Facebook because they do that just as much. It's also funny that both parties agreed on this, but can't seem to agree on any other important things.
@rbreich as someone outside the US I've been thinking this for years. I don't know what China might do with our info, but it's guaranteed that US companies will use it for profit.
@rbreich yeah, I am pretty sure the law is not supposed to single out specific people and companies, but is supposed to ban specific behaviors.
But we live in a post rule society where the deplorables respond with "well, see if you can stop me!"
I hope they fight it in court, and hope they win, specifically so congress has to write into a law what they are afraid of, and we as consumers can sue Google or Facebook or Amazon if they are doing the same thing.
@rbreich
I find it very funny that everyone is freaking out about TikTok. Yes it has it's issues.
But the China scare is hypocritical.
The USA imports Trillions of dollars of merchandise from China, we literally fund the Chinese government and give them the cash to upgrade their military and technology that they use against us.
Banning TikTok is not the solution. Move manufacturing to other nations, including the USA and stop the funding of a hostile government who allies with Russia & DPRK.
@rbreich "Trying"? Succeeding at levels beyond our capacity to encapsulate. Even those of us who get it are manipulated in ways we are completely unaware of. To the point we have to wonder, are our thoughts even our own?