The Chinese government already has our data thanks to Facebook, Google, and reddit (and just about every other free service). This ban (“forced sale” that will never happen because the US is only 10% of their revenue) is to limit our communication, not to save our data. They could pass legislation to protect our data across the board, but they (the house) have too much invested in meta and them to do anything to harm their bottom line.
This ban only became the biggest most important thing for the government to do after we all started learning what Israel was doing in Gaza. Our house of reps is primarily owned by Israel and private corporations, and Tiktok is a driving force for change. It’s getting more young people to vote than anything before. And all they want is representation that actually represents, rather than cater to bribery. This idea is terrifying to those currently in power, because they’ve enjoyed doing almost nothing good for the American people for 4 decades while getting stupid rich at the same time.
I understand a lot of people knew what was happening to the Palestinians for years, but that was information the US was happy to keep to itself. Tiktok made it super clear to the rest of us what was actually going on.
I’m not trying to say data privacy isn’t important. It is, but the ship has sailed on that problem. We can do things to limit the damage to future users, but everyone that’s already been on the Internet… 🤷. This is an issue they have with US citizens learning about all the shady underhanded shit they’ve been doing for decades. If they were truly worried about our data privacy, meta and Google would be their first and primary targets, rather than the primary beneficiaries from a sale (because a sale would immediately ruin it) or ban.
And finally (sorry, I know this is long), I’ve seen more anti Chinese information on Tiktok than anywhere else. If they were in control of what’s being shown (the government’s other big excuse here), you’d think they’d censor their past and current atrocities from being known. Everything I see on Tiktok doesn’t serve China at all. In fact if we’re finally able to vote out the dinosaurs and money whores that currently run things, then it may actually hurt China in the long run.
Thanks for reading my ranting Ted talk. Sorry about that!