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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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politics
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I have to disagree, I actually haven't seen any evidence presented showing the Chinese government is meddling through TikTok, at least not to any higher degree than the US government meddles in US-operated social media.
A Tiktok ban comes off as red scare-style overreaction that risks losing the support of a lot of young Americans who already see the US federal government as a surveillance state. This certainly does not do anything to quell those sentiments.
I'm not aware of any either. But we know that TikTok is still partially owned by the Chinese government, unlike Facebook or other social medias. Why would we put ourselves into a situation where an adversary has their software installed into millions of devices in the US, with the ability to influence what those same users see and hear, as well as having the ability to extract information through the application? Not to mention, China wouldn't allow the same in their country (hell they don't allow any companies to operate there without partial China ownership and influence). We know that the US government doesn't trust Chinese hardware (Huawei) within the country, why would Chinese software be any different?
Honestly, I feel the whole world is treating China way too nice when you consider how much they screw over everybody else in trade. China wants to be able to freely access other countries markets, while completely limiting and discouraging any other country's companies from accessing theirs. If China wants to play that game, then they should be getting an equivalent response: No free trade, no easy access to our markets.
Lol the US doesn't need to 'partially own' facebook or twitter in order to exert control or influence over it.
Honestly, I feel the whole world is treating the US way too nice when you consider how much they screw over everybody else in trade.
Are you seriously saying that a government having partial ownership of a company exerts an equivalent amount of influence as a government that has no ownership of a company?
Naive to think stock ownership is the only leash, let alone the shortest one. Regulations, subsidies, contracts - the government has a whole arsenal and near limitless resources to keep companies working within the US's interest, especially when those interests are related to national security. Entire departments within 3 letter agencies are dedicated to public messaging.
Only a western liberal can mistake abstract ownership of a thing for absolute control of it. What is threatening about TikTok isn't China's control over it, but the US's absence of control.
This feels like double speak... The US can both control a company with near limitless resources, but also the US has no control over.. a company. All of that applies to Facebook as well. Again the main difference being, China has part ownership of tiktok and therefore direct influence that the US doesn't have on many companies. The US doesn't have the kinds of control levers that a more authoritarian government like China has. Facebook, a large company can fight the US in courts to protect themselves. TikTok can not do the same with China.
Edit- you should insert a line break after your quoted text, that way the whole comment isn't presented as a part of a block quote
Except my point isn't to defend tiktok or china, it's to condemn all privately owned social media (including US companies), because without the user being in control over their content presentation pretty much any social media company can abuse their influence at the whim of their host government.
My point remains the same: the US has as much influence over domestic social media companies as China has over TikTok, and all privately controlled social media (or at least social media that is not within the user's control) aught to be banned, not just private social media that's owned by a foreign adversary.
Thanks for the suggestion on the quote.
Are you suggesting their should be a publicly owned social media instead? I don't quite see people being very happy about all privately owned social medias being banned working out well in the US.
I think what we do agree with is that currently, social medias are too influential with little oversight. Just seems like you feel that there isn't enough oversight over a private company to ever fix the issue.
Not at all - I think social media should follow an atomized federation model, as in lemmy, mastodon, ect. Distributed networks are far more robust against outside influence.
What I definitely don't want is for-profit private social media that is a completely proprietary black box - that enables both private and governmental influence without the knowledge of the users. The US banning tiktok basically just confirms (or adds to the suspicion) that the US govt has a comfortable amount of control over domestic social media, and is uncomfortable with foreign companies that are outside of their influence.
I suspect the ire at tiktok has a lot to do with the trend of increasingly left-leaning content on the platform - content that they have no ability to suppress.
Yeah, it’s kind of a distraction. Sure, it’s probably bad that the Chinese government has a source for so much personal data for so many people, but it’s also bad that Facebook does, and many more. The real problem is the lack of privacy rights, controls, remedies, regardless of whom collects it
Even back 30 years ago, I knew someone who wanted to build a dating app. Even back then, he didn’t care about income from the users. Even that long ago, the market for detailed personal data was the profit center
it's both: it's personal data AND a platform to feed targeted content. The US enjoys being able to deliver content/suppress content on US-based social media, but I imagine they don't have as much (or any) ability to control content on TikTok.