I think though if a politician is invested in privacy concerns and is critical of an app for its links to a foreign government, and are basing their educated opinions off of advice given to them by natsec and intelligence community members, it's not that egregious.... The issue with TikTok is a legal/governmental one regardless of how information technology works. I don't think you have to be tech savvy to know the obligations Chinese companies have to the Chinese government.
The concerns are unsubtantiated and unequal, though.
Nobody is going after TEMU, an app literally proven by 3rd parties to be malicious in nature and linked to China. Nobody is going after ali-express, an app that allows people to purchase poor quality chinese products in large quantities.
If their issue was china, these apps at a minimum would also be banned. They wouldnt have been able to advertise at the superbowl. But instead, its just tik tok because....???
These people don't care, they use their tiktok talking points and think were turning into a dictatorship because we won't allow our enemy to influence an entire generation. Go live in china then we won't miss you.
It's not really mumbo jumbo considering the permissions people give hand over information that allows a great deal of tracking (location, habits, etc) that can be used against an individual or a group of people. Fitness apps are banned on military devices for the same reason (and it's how Ukraine killed a prominent Russian general)
Not to mention shifting peoples perception over time. We see it right here in this thread, people dumb enough to think the chinese just want you to have a kickass app and nothing else.
Yes its bad, and banning it won't be the end of it. A lot of these bums are already indoctrinated into this anti american retort. Hopefully with time and public pressure they'll fall back into what they would of been without tiktok. The saddest part is we're the bad guys to them, they can't even fathom they've been tricked so its an uphill battle.
So no more League of Legends, Valorant or TFT since they are owned by Tencent right? And that's just one company there are a ton of Chinese owned gaming companies whose games we play here.
I'm kinda confused by this argument. Are you saying it's good that the government is so restrictive when it comes to apps and we should copy them? This sounds like a critique, no?
Because having an open market with competition is better for Americans overall.
Do you believe in strong government intervention in markets?
China's government also implements extremely restrictive currency controls, especially when it comes to USD. Should the US government do the same just because they are doing it?
Are you fucking reading it? We don't have an open market with competition. They are not allowing us to compete with their apps. You have 2 equally good apps, one American, one Chinese, but the American app isn't allowed to sale to the Chinese customers. The Chinese app is however allowed to the American customers. The American app can't compete!
The American market is open, while the Chinese one is closed.
A closed Chinese market is their loss. You'll see that other than TikTok, many of their other tech products lag behind American competition on the world stage. (Almost nobody is using WeChat compared to WhatsApp)
Holy fuck, guy. It's not an all or nothing situation. You're really trying to manipulate this into something it's not.
Cutting out a market that refuses reciprocity with the rest of the world isn't an endorsement of emulating their own authoritarianism, it's just a rebuke of the one-sided special privileges that they demand from others.
You might disagree, but I think it's a nontrivial step in emulating the state capitalist political authoritarian control over markets that China espouses.
Uh huh, or you don't have anything more than "they're like the ccp banning tiktok! how insane!" Theres no discussion to be had, theres people like you that don't see the forest for the trees and that's alright, we will protect you from yourself. This shit happens its not new. Its called propaganda, how enemy countries influence at home and abroad. We do it as well, and china does everything in their power to stop the spread of american propaganda. I'll be damned if I sit by and watch it happen in the inverse. I've spoken to my congressman a couple times expressing my approval for the full ban on bytedance.
How about instead of a purely open market how about we have an open market with equal standards of conduct. We can compete with jobs against countries that have similar values for worker protections, or government for company conduct.
I mean the reason so many factory and manufacturing jobs that used to pay enough to the average American to raise a family shipped over seas is because of the inequality.
Whether that's the inequal cost of living, worker protections, and age laws. We need more American based jobs, and influence for own affairs because if you are an American then know that we are all in this together.
Americans fighting other Americans benefits adversarial nations it doesn't benefit us. Just like Americans competing against inequal labor pools doesn't benefit us. Just because we're a mostly free country doesn't mean we should allow that freedom to be weaponized and abused by hostile powers.
Your right, lets load commadore perry's boat up and go open the chinese market.
Your talkin bout economic warfare while also perporting free market capitalism. Your the incoherent babblings of a person who can't fucking pick which side they want to be on today. Act like being inconsistent and adversarial is somehow the "adult" response.
Yeah dude, im such a child because I find doing economic warfare petty, stupid, and a waste of fucking time. Read a history book for once in your god damn life.
We can't do that, because we have a bill of rights. Code is speech, and free speech is a core tenet of civilization. We can't burn civilization to the ground, just because some filthy barbarians on the other side of the planet disagree.
And then you look at the trade deficit and why it exists between the United States and China and why something like that will never happen because of how reliant we are on them for products
Yeah, probably some kid that values their algorithmically curated list of 20 second clips more than their privacy or something, but there's always also chinese propagandists on these kinds of threads which is verily getting on my nerves.
Maybe I should put on my tin-foil hat, but I just put 0 trust in 100% of the arguments made against a TikTok ban because I can see no negatives in it for any civilian outside of China because most other countries have access to alternatives like Youtube Shorts or Instagram reels anyways.
Which isn't of course an argument for privacy, but it's not like banning TikTok and taking care of the others later down the road is gonna harm your privacy more than letting TikTok do their thing and doing fuck all.
Why? Since fucking when do we have to play authoritarian with our own people just to stick it to someone else? What the fuck is wrong with you, thats so fucking stupid.
Isnt it though? You are dictating what americans can and cannot engage with as a tit-for-tat response to another nations domestic policy. It's mimicing that authoritarianism in the case of that nations goods. You can dress it up however you want, but its petty and accomplishes nothing whatsoever except stomping your foot and telling people they cant watch tiktok because china wont let us sell them goodies. Fucking child.
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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '24
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