I’ll tell you a secret you might have missed.
It’s not about the privacy.
It’s about a foreign country of similar power levels having the ability to shape your people’s political opinions.
They’re shitting themselves because it’s one of the first times it’s happened to them instead of them doing it to someone else.
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Nah. They haven’t lost shit.
They’re just bricking it over turnabout being FairPlay for once.
I feel like the American media is out of control and is no longer a tool of the people, but a fire hose of the wealthy, disseminating whatever will help them keep their power.
They have convinced the people that news makes you intelligent, when really the lack of new ideas and differing viewpoints creates a closed feedback loop so they just regurgitate whatever they hear with absolute confidence, but if you ask them a question it all falls apart.
Fox, CNN, New York Times, NPR, it’s all owned or supported in such a way that they dare not bite the hand that feeds it.
So I, for one, am open to hearing what foreign countries have to say.
No matter what your source of information is, you always have to be mindful and take information in context, and be sure to validate unproven claims. There’s a thousand interests competing for your attention and loyalty, and a lot of it is driven through fear and uncertainty.
Any fearmongering about China makes me uncomfortable, as it should every rational thinking person. Just like fearmongering against everyone should be viewed with suspicion.
Be careful out there, everyone. It’s a wild jungle.
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I remember articles in the early 00s about how China wouldn’t allow Google to operate there and a big deal was made about “the great firewall of China” and how it was all about censorship, but now that China has an influential internet service, US congress is demanding they hand over ownership of US operations to a US company.
To be fair, they haven’t exactly stepped in where the activities of Chinese applications are concerned. They just keep threatening to do so.
See Montana
True but also true: you are comparing multinational corporations to the Chinese government, who is currently waging cold war against Western states. That’s the quiet part they’re taking care not to say loud, hence posturing.
Show me on the doll where China touched you
Canada isn’t so big that it’s statistically unlikely I don’t know someone China “touched” and is still “touching” today. More than 5% of Canadians are Chinese. With Chinese police actions being documented to be carried out within 100km of me and quite likely within my own city, it’s starting to get pretty fucking personal for everyone over here.
If they’re Chinese citizens then they are technically still bound by Chinese law even while living abroad, just as an american or Canadian would be if they were living in another country.
Unless you’re speaking of Canadian citizens that are ethnic Chinese but not citizens of the PRC then I would like so see some proof on these documented Chinese police actions in Canada.
In the south China sea lol
You mean roughly the part of the world where the US used Agent Orange and flamethrowers?
Oh, and nuked twice. Almost forgot.
The Philippines: am I a joke to you?
Certainly not. They were colonized. Should have remembered that as well.
Yes, you probably should listen to some Filipino perspectives on the south China sea.
or in the sovereign country where most of the entire world’s chip supply comes from, but “china needs it more” so we should just let them invade
also, don’t forget all the chinese propaganda about how they’re going to dethrone america and become the world superpower. do they seriously expect to wage a cold war and not have the west respond to that?
Who are you even talking to? Did someone let Kissinger into this discussion? We have rules about that.
Of course, why else would China build their country so close to all those US military bases. Such agression
whatabout
I shouldn’t defend myself from China because the USA built bases, is that your argument?
Xenophobia (from Ancient Greek ξένος (xénos) ‘strange, foreign, alien’, and φόβος (phóbos) ‘fear’) is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange.
Their politicians are geriatric boomers. Biden can barely make sense on his phrases when he speaks. Just let the USA implode
The same fearmongering would’ve happened to American social media apps if it wasn’t for that sweet sweet data the US government is able to get.
Now do American politicians when an elementary school is attacked by a gunman.
There’d be nothing for the top box.
When a trans person is on a beer can:
When an elementary school is shot up for the 5th time this week by a gunman:
American politicians don’t need social media to invade peoples privacy. The patriot act sealed the deal a while ago. If they want to spy, they’re going to.
I should also add that the whole tik tok ban is just a way to toss in extra laws that give the America government more control. They say it’s about tik tok, but it’s a scapegoat to get people to vote for invasive laws.
new user freshly connected to internet, would you rather:
-waste your precious time and attention on hypercapitalist hellscape headquartered in usa, or
-waste your precious time and attention on hypercapitalist hellscape headquartered in china
I would pick whatever entertains me the most.
Why not spend your time on a Japanese platform? We got anime ~
Japanese sites have web ui designs that are pretty bad. Argue way worse than having to use the official reddit app ad wise.
Is wasting my precious time and attention on an anticapitalist hellscape headquartered on distributed servers around the world an option?
as long as it lasts
Both are bad.
But only one is a national security threat.
Is it the one that radicalizes people into white supremacist terrorism?
Depends on the perspective
@Veedems If our freedom we wanna keep. Facebook, Microsoft, BP, Nestlé, and Google we have to kill.
Can’t we just say that both are bad?
I think that is generally the point?
Often Americans point to china as big bad for shit America is actively doing as well, while pretending America is so great. They both fucking suck. They both want to be the major super power and to do so they both do horrible shit to their own people, people in other countries, entire other countries, both extremely capitalistic, etc.
Not on the mass media.
Mass media are at their core propaganda tools. Their mission is to further the agendas of whoever finances them, they are not driven by the pursuit of truth, justice or anything related such as the defense of privacy.
politicians are actively talking about banning tiktok. let me know when they do the same for twitter, instagram, reddit, facebook, tinder, youtube, google, amazon, and every other US site that does the exact same snooping that tiktok does. THEN we can say “both are bad”.
I think you’ve got it backwards. If we can’t acknowledge that both are bad before talking about banning them, then what justification do we have for banning them?
We should be saying both are bad. We need much stronger, EU like privacy laws.
And how would privacy laws be applied to TikTok, which is outside the jurisdiction of these laws?
The only way to get TikTok to have any privacy policies at all is by threatening to block them.
Which is what’s happening.
TikTok isn’t outside of that jurisdiction, they are operating in places like the US. If they violate privacy laws, you remove them from accessing that market
The key difference is that American Government agencies don’t have access to the information TikTok steals from its users.
Edit: This comment implied the US has easy access to the data from companies like Facebook.
This is naive. America has all the laws they need to get data from private companies, just the same as China
Sure, but there’s a difference between having the potential to do something, and actively doing it. I’m aware the FBI/CIA can get my data from Google if they want it, but something would have to trigger them into wanting to investigate me. With a Chinese company there is no “if”, all of the data goes straight to the CCP. Tencent, the bloated multimedia company, even had a moment of ironic hypocrisy where they didn’t want to give away all of their users’ data.
The US and UK governments have literally that
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
You should probably read your own links. It only reinforces what I said. Also, I’m thankfully not American.
I assume you’re referring to the fact that it claims to be based on court orders
You might want to look into what the FISA court counts as oversight
And thanks to Snowden revelations we know for a fact that US companies work directly with US government and share all their user data.
Exactly this
This is what people miss. Furthermore, it’s reasonable not to want an enemy state to have access to information relating to a country’s citizens. Yes, the US has done. Yes, it was wrong. Yes, they are getting a taste of their own medicine. That’s why they’re worried about it. They know how badly that information can be used.
Furthermore, it is clear the Chinese government has an influence over app contents. It is easy for them to use it to shape the opinions of their userbase depending on the country.
At least in theory they have to get a warrant, although there are plenty of examples of tech companies handing over information without one. They definitely have access to all the same information if they really want it though.
Edit: In hindsight I think I may have misinterpreted how that post was intended. American government agencies do have a harder time getting access to TikTok’s information, although at least for US users TikTok has separate servers that make it possible for them to do so.
They have to get a warrant to demand it, yes. But if they show up with a bag full of money, the companies will just turn it right over.
They probably don’t even need that. Corpos like to work with the government, it’s mutual.
Yeah, what does Meta have to lose? Only their reputation for protecting user privacy, which was lost long ago.
Privacy rights are only a suggestion nowadays. It’s pretty sad.
Do other people who defend China even use or like TikTok? I sure don’t, I have never used TikTok as an argument for China.
