The swift rebuke shifts attention to the Senate, where the bill faces significant political barriers and constitutional concerns
The swift rebuke shifts attention to the Senate, where the bill faces significant political barriers and constitutional concerns
I find it all quite protectionist. The privacy risk around social media is real, but I don’t see why TikTok should be singled out. And there’s a perfectly legitimate concern about the ability for hostile states to use social media to influence elections in democratic states - as Russia did in the UK and US in 2016 with Facebook and Twitter - but again, it’s not obvious why TikTok should be singled out for this. If the Chinese want to swing an election, they’re not going to do it by influencing Boomers on Facebook, not through a platform that is overwhelmingly used by the age demographic that is least likely to vote…
It is absolutely protectionist.
I am not sure if the national security claims are valid or not; I could see that going either way. Just having all that information could pose a problem, but the CCP is sophisticated enough to get that info through other means, too.
All that being said, Facebook and Google are absolutely happy about this. They have spent billions trying to replicate TikTok’s algorithm, and are failing. They are also lobbying congress to do nothing about data protection and privacy. It’s hypocritical for the US to only target TikTok.
But, it is also true that young people don’t vote, so TikTok is probably not the best audience for election disinformation.