Comment on Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to Biden, who has already committed to signing it
ISOmorph@feddit.de 5 months ago
I don’t understand why people get so upset about this. Yes, Google, Facebook, etc. hoard your data too. But there’s a big difference wether that data is hoarded domestically or by a foreign nation that is pretty blatant about their industry espionage and political propaganda. Yes, the US do it too. But you really can’t blame a country for protecting it’s interests, be they ethical or not.
Personally, I just find it really disappointing. This Tik Tok issue could have been an opportunity to improve privacy and reduce data collection across the board. Instead, it’s a surgical strike in order to not disrupt American tech companies doing the same thing.
What will happen is that Bytedance will sell the US Tik Tok to an American VC firm and it will continue data hoarding as before. This time, the US government will be getting the data instead of the CCP. I’d rather nobody got it.
You can absolutely blame a country for doing that actually. What kind of argument is that? People shouldn’t be upset when their government does something unethical as long as it’s “protecting its interests”?
That’s not quite what I meant.
The argument I most often see and is that TikTok should stay because Facebook and Google are just as bad. That’s stupid because domestic espionage is obviously worse than foreign espionage to any government.
If your argument is that the TikTok ban is good and Facebook and Google should be next because of the similar practises then I’m 100% with you.
There is also a massive difference in user experience in China vs abroad, to the point where they might as well be two fundamentally different apps. Even just things like time limits for children exist by default in China and are unavailable elsewhere, which kind of feels like an admission that they only take things like platform safety seriously at home.
As someone who doesn’t live in the US:
The data from google and facebook is hoarded by a foreign nation (the US is basically a quasi-democratic plutocracy which also has extremely extensive surveillance both legally and agencies caught working in grey areas) to boost surveillance and that is pretty blatant about their espionage and political propaganda. We get US political right wing propaganda on these platforms all over the rest of the world.
There is a difference of course, but the gap is closing significantly every few years.
CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
As a user and not as a government agent, why should I care? If anything, having a foreign government hoard my data and spy on me is better than the government that actually has jurisdiction over me. If I were posting things critical of my own government I would rather have a foreign government hoard that data than my own government. There’s a lot more of a chance that US data hoarding leads to action against US citizens than Chinese data hoarding.
I don’t see how this benefits average Americans in any way. This helps the government and corporations.
DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 5 months ago
It’s not just about data hoarding, though. It’s also about a social media company having considerable influence over the messaging seen by a very large part of the voting population.
Yes, it’s no different to other social media companies, but with one exception: the company in question is subject to the whims of the Chinese government. Something the US government is clearly fearful of.
CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
The domestic social media companies are at the whims of the billionaire class which I would argue is just as bad for voter influence. Neither side wants you to vote in your best interest.
DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 5 months ago
Yep, agreed, but at least the government of the day can try and reign them in with legislation and regulation. Not saying they are (or will), but they’d have the option, if they had the balls to do it.
jarfil@beehaw.org 5 months ago
At first glance, that would be true… but beware, since either will be happy to throw you under the bus whenever it helps their agenda.
If, for example, China was to hoard data about voters for A, B, and C… whenever they wanted to favor B voters, they could “leak” the most compromising data about A and C so the US government would take action… or if they wanted to wreak havoc and favor D, they could leak all data about everyone. A much simpler case, is that having more data on more people, allows them to better tailor and target misinformation campaigns that benefit them. So really, any kind of hoarding has a similar chance of getting acted upon.
As a simple user, you are right that you shouldn’t care much about who hoards data about you, your main care should be about anyone hoarding that data at all.