cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12876226
The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.
US officials have cited the widespread commercial availability of US citizens’ data as another source of national security risk. The US government and other domestic law enforcement agencies are also known to have purchased US citizens’ data from commercial data brokers.
Either the propaganda is working or there’s no hope for any of us. And I’m not saying this facetiously.
The idea of a company in China versus in the West is very different. In the West a company has near complete autonomy within the confines of law in the democratic country it’s in. In China, a company is completely beholden to the will of the CCP. Smaller companies are not worth getting involved with, but larger companies like Bytedance and Baidu are effectively corporate offices of the CCP.
We’re talking about a communist dictatorship that’s constantly threatening Taiwan with invasion and death threats. Goes around the South China Sea harassing the countries there by attacking their military and civilian ships with high power water cannons. Putting nets and markers right up against those same countries, in some instances within 50 or so kilometers. Then there’s the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people. The constant suppression of any negative news. The complete isolation of its people from accessing the internet or news from the rest of the world. It just goes on.
China is an adversarial power to Western nations and even many Asian ones.
The issue isn’t that Bytedance is simply Chinese. The issue is that China does not allow a single bit of information leaving its borders without its explicit say so. Which is why any Chinese company that conducts any business outside China has CCP officials stationed at the company’s offices and have to examine and approve everything that goes out.
So what’s the difference between the CCP getting it for free from Tiktok and paying for it from an “American” corporation?
None of what you said matters in this. Not when Zuckerberg is specifically courting China to spend advertising dollars and buy data.
Is the money changing hands making the end effect any different?
TikTok is both a sacrifice to make it look like something is being done and a called hit on a competitor.
Whataboutism at its finest.
That word does not mean what you think it means. In fact throwing China’s human rights record out there like it matters in preventing American consumer data from flowing to China is far closer to whataboutism.
The only thing that matters in stopping American Consumer Data from being collected by the CCP is stopping American Consumer Data from being collected by the CCP.
If that’s your stated goal then you need to hold all the data vendors accountable, not just the scary Chinese one. Because there’s nothing stopping them from selling it to China right now. There’s a whole chain of articles about Facebook and Meta doing this for over a decade. And you’re worried only about Tiktok.
Gee I wonder why that might be?
And how is this accomplished when the CCP has direct control and direct access to the company that develops the app collecting the data?
Well that’s a massive assumption. Please show me where I said “I’m only worried about TikTok”.
Obviously it doesn’t. But this doesn’t accomplish that goal. It’s like saying I hate bananas, let’s ban PBJs.
If you want to ban foreign countries collecting data then make that the law and ban TikTok when they break it. And then ban Facebook when they break it. That’s how good legislation is done. This kind of targeted bullshit is just a gift to Musk, Zuckerberg, and whoever runs Google and Apple these days. They’re going to funnel data to the CCP just as fast as they can make a profit from it.
The entire algorithm thing is also bullshit. Facebook has been courting the CCP for advertising for over a decade. To think they won’t use targeted ads for an info op is just fucking naive.
That’s partially true. But there’s a difference between having access to a dataset vs having direct control over an app, which includes the algorithms and content being shown.
In any case, if it goes through to a full ban, you can still use the app. It just cannot be distributed on any app stores. It would still be possible to sideload it (on Android).
And that will discourage a lot of people from using it, which would be the point.
I also would like to see any reports or studies showing China buying data from other social media platforms.
Oh? And what would that difference be?
If that needs to be spelled out to you, then that explains your position.
You’re either not too smart to understand, or you’re a tankie of some kind.
You also completely dodged the part where you need to backup your claims about Facebook selling data to China.