@mcc sorry, I believe point no. 1 is not completely accurate - I believe this is not as simple as you put it. Aside from the speech used on TikTok, there are legitimate security concerns around the data of US citizens being harvested off TikTok that is being sent to servers in China that are owned by the Chinese gov't. I have read a few reports that there is a dark purpose to the data being gathered - that the Chinese gov't is using this data to build psychological profiles of non-Chinese nationals to be weaponized in the future. Also, the spread of disinformation (not only from China) and attacks on specific groups is well documented, even in the national media. There's also the mental toll that social media takes on people (generally), especially among younger generations. Then there's the conversation around espionage, theft of IP, political manipulation, etc.

It's a dangerous app at many levels. The same argument can be said against the likes of Facebook, X, Snapchat, etc.

Even Trump has flipflopped - he's the one who enacted an outright ban and block of TikTok being installed on ANY US gov't system or device owned by a gov't employee because of the reasons I noted above (among others). But recently he said something in an interview along the lines of "TikTok is a great platform. I won 34% of the young vote because of TikTok".

To further clarify - This ban is not also a "block" for consumers. It simply means that TikTok can no longer use US hosting services or have their app listed in US app stores. Consumers will still be able to use the app, but they won't get app updates (leaving them vulnerable to attacks without proper patching), and the user experience will be degraded due to hosts being moved outside of the US. It also means user data is now offshore...not within our boarders. That should scare people even more.

Personally, I stand behind this ban. I do agree with point no. 2 though. The US has been doing things like this for decades. Most of it just isn't public knowledge.

@mcc sorry, I don’t buy your premise in point 1 at all. I don’t think it’s absurd that the government would balk at the idea of a geopolitical adversary controlling a hugely popular social media platform.

There’s zero evidence that it’s because of speech. Trump’s initial move to block it six years ago was, but that went nowhere, and even he walked that back before the end of his first term.

This ban is not the same thing. Different people, different motivations, different outcome (maybe)

@mcc I think there were other reasons.

Tiktok didn't adhere to the "approved list of advertisers" and a bunch of people now know what Temu is.

That was a problem for the industrialists who run this place

@mcc
Tiktok in USA ?
Good !

X on China ?
Bad ?

Where is the razon ?

The people were packeted by the instituitions everywhere, were transformed in data !

A digital evil is a reallity.

Humanity ?
No !

WAR !

@mcc No.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2v13nz202o

@mcc https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-congress.html

Scroll down for statistics in the article.

@mcc

No, hahaha, it ia run by the Chinese military.

@mcc I wish people would stop chatting about #TikTok and start to use that energy to convince TikTok users to join the #Fediverse !

#Mastodon
#PixelFed
#PeerTube
#Misskey
#Loops