Summary
TikTok plans to shut down its U.S. operations by January 19 unless the Supreme Court blocks a new law requiring its sale by Chinese parent company ByteDance.
The law, defended by the Biden administration as a national security measure, has been challenged by TikTok, ByteDance, and users as a violation of free speech.
The court, facing pressure from Trump to delay a decision, will hear arguments just days before the law’s implementation.
A shutdown could cost TikTok millions of users and ad revenue, with a ruling expected soon.
Stricter laws restricting data collection would actually solve the problem but that will hurt the American propaganda machine just as much. China will diffuse it’s propaganda through our own social media like they clearly already do. They can literally buy the data from our own data brokers, it won’t even stop them from being effective.
It’s not simply about collecting data. That’s only part of the problem.
Why do people keep repeating this like it’s the only thing.
Tiktok controls the algorithm controlling which clips get shown. Combined with the data, this means they can propaganda individuals so hard it will make your head spin.
Yeah! Only Facebook can propagandize my sweet ass!
This is not an argument against banning TikTok. This is an argument for banning Facebook (and all other centralized social media) right along with it.
Yeah, Chinese leadership was complaining about the mass migration from Twitter to Bluesky because it rendered their bit accounts useless, so it’s not like it’s a secret or anything.
This has always been about how TikTok can’t be bought out as a propaganda machine by American billionaires.
“It’s to protect our citizens from China!”
“Are we going to have stronger data protection laws across all 50 states and the federal government to help protect our citizens?”
“That sounds like a terrorist wanting privacy to hide form Facebook and Google’s data to the NSA!”