this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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IMO the important detail is about the control the country's government is able to have and use over the company. What things are they sharing with the state? We know the big American social media companies are either forced or choose to comply with sharing data, or the data is used without asking. I don't trust Meta, Google, and Microsoft any more than I trust ByteDance (the makers of tik tok), and I don't want my data to be used by the US, China or anyone else.
I don't disagree. If you read any of my statements on this topic you'd see that I am not Pro US when it comes to US companies and user data. It's a crap shoot. Literally every American tech company is supplying the US government with access to their user data, and that's been in the news for years. Their user data centric business practices and ad aggregation services are how they make money and that's what I would think is a well known fact except some people even here don't seem to recognise it. Tik tok is definitely not alone in this.
However, the way that US and China control and access that data is not the same, and further the way the two countries are run, the control they exert over their citizens and the repercussions are different. My statement was not about whether or not you should trust either government or the tech companies of either country more or less.
It was acknowledging that the two countries and their relationships with their citizens is not the same and further that while both are problematic (and I don't necessarily agree with forcing the sale of Tik tok because I don't think it will fix the real problem which I believe is user privacy and regulation of that/ rights given to users), tik tok is problematic and China is not safe. China should not be allowed to operate this kind of operation in a foreign sovereign nation and use it as a way to exert outside control over its populace. And yes. No country should be doing that, US included.
If you think this bill is somehow going to make your user data safer? You're wrong. If you think tik tok is going to just up and leave the US? I seriously doubt that. If you think the US and China are one and the same, you're wrong. Every single time there is push back against these companies in the US, we gain ground. That cannot ever be said for the Chinese populace in relation to the CCP's control over the user data of its citizens and they are actively monitoring those citizens (which I wouldn't claim the US is doing whole hog). If people in China try to push back against the monitoring the CCP disappears them and their families. Jack Ma? Made some anti-CCP comments and disappeared for like a year. What billionaire in the US is just missing for a year after making anti-government comments?
And unless you have some data to back up that the US is actively monitoring every single one of its citizens user data (yeah I know about the silly NSA data base and the laws and protocols enacted after 9/11, I'm talking new and relevant data) to back up any claims that China and the US access, or treat user data the same, don't bother responding.