As someone in the US who has had their private data leaked multiple times (ive lost count) and is extremely careful when browsing you tube as to not be drawn into a conspiracy ridden rabbit hole, I’m not sure what the point of this tik tok ban is. To me tik tok is social media business as usual. If congress is going to go this hard on a social media company and privacy concerns they should be doing this with all the other companies that pry into our private lives and try their best to manipulate us as well (car makers, appliance manufactures, phone makers, wearbales, ect…) otherwise to me this comes across as the US congress extorting a single company to make billionaires richer. It has been shown time and time again that even US based social media companies are vulnerable to influencing conspiracy theorists and swaying the votes of thousands of people.I feel like we are at the pinnacle of technological ignorance here. Thoughts?
I trust that China is every bit as manipulative and untrustworthy as western governments, so I absolutely believe that they either have or will use TikTok to further their own geopolitical/economic ends either by feeding content to sway opinions or for intelligence gathering.
But as someone in a western nation I am all for preventing other nations from gathering inteligence or running psyops on us, I dont belive that having something like TikTok that is (or can be) effectively 100% controlled by a foreign government is a good thing.