Is It Time To Ban TikTok Et Al?

There has been a meltdown amongst the far right maga tiktok grifters

And Elon. <cough> I mean X. But yes, definitely no lousy Chinese competitors.

It is absolutely fine for a South African billionaire megalomaniac and a dork to have your data, just not the Chinese!

Only meltdown I'm seeing is from left leaning so called influencers who might have to go out and actually get a real job.

I don’t know what the “truth” is about Tik Tok but it’s clear that China has a wish to interfere with the privacy of every person on this planet - they have honed this technology by experimenting on their own population - they are tracking every movement of their citizens and approx 1/9 citizens are members of the communist party - reporting back regularly on their neighbours. Some ethnic groups in China cannot move about unless they carry their phones with them in order to facilitate government tracking. All citizens have a “social” score (can’t remember the exact label used)- essentially the quality of your social score influences your ability to survive, work, live- if your social score drops, you could be facing massive hardship-simply a report back to the “party” on how you didn’t park your car correctly could impact your social score.

For me, this isn’t about Tik Tok per se- it’s about any China manufactured and owned technology - but at this stage, I’m not sure will legislation or bans actually work to prevent the covert activity of such apps- best we can do is produce trusted software that counteracts this technology and limits their ability to perform whatever data gathering tasks they’re programmed to do

“Why is it a security threat?" Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Friday. "If you have TikTok on your phone currently, it can track your whereabouts, it can read your text messages, it can track your keystrokes. It has access to your phone records."

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/why-is-tiktok-being-banned-supreme-court-congress/

I recommend this excellent BBC documentary, especially if you think I’m just some mad conspiracist

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001wkcr

banning anything that allows a voice to people is wrong.

If collection of data is the crime, then ban as sbook, instagram Google etc… all collect massive amounts of data on individuals but I suppose it’s for the American government so it’s “good”.

170 million users in the US. 3.5 million Apparently signed up to Rednote..a Chinese platform.

Didn’t stop politicians of both sides using TikTok during the last election in the States! I wonder why?

Yes there are idiots on there, but honestly, 7 millions business owners using it, making a living. Somewhere in the region of 250,000 jobs in the US. Seems a silly thing to ban IMHO. It allows discussions and comments that I have not seen on other platforms.

Allowing governments to ban things is a slippery road.

Meta, X and Google are worse than anything tick tock has done. X are manipulating referenda and elections, Meta have already been proven to be involved in the same. Musk is actively interfering in UK and US politics as we speak. Meta is changing policies to suit whatever administration comes into power. It's clear they're government controlled.

Social media should be banned outright, for its detrimental effect on humans, aside from all the interference which is just another reason to get rid of them. Data collection by Google and bing should be clamped down on.

TikTok app is doing more than allowing people to post silly videos, it's accessing all of your data on other apps, messages, emails, photos. So imagine , and there are, lots of high profile politicians on tiktok, maybe even the President, and China is tracking and spying on their every word every movement, it's not about the girl down the street posting dance moves, its about the high profile targets.

People seem to forget that the reason why there has been legislation leading to the "banning" of TiK-Tok is the ownership of Tik-Tok by Bytedance, whihc is a Chinese company subject to the whim of the CCP. They can sell it to a non-Chinese owner and problem largely solved.

There was never an outright ban on the app, just aban on its ultimate control by the Chinese government.

Do you think that US companies are doing better with your data or personal information. Chances are they’re being far more nefarious.

But that’s not how western media want it to be Portrayed. China = bad

According to TikTok guy who testified to the US senate last year "senator I'm Singaporean", Trump will give TikTok a 90 day exemption from the ban. Enough time to get control of it.

Once Musk or whoever buts it, they can ensure it stops being informative and just pushes the culture wars of the day. Wall to wall trans bathrooms and immigrants.

I mean all social media apps. The likes of boards and reddit have merit for discourse. There's no decent conversations being had on Facebook, or X. Total cesspits with weirdos abusing people from all sides completely unmoderated.

Bullying, misinformation, blatant racism, abuse of everyone, criticism of everything. There isn't a single redeeming feature of any of those apps that in any way offsets the damage they do. Add in the dumbing down effect and people's inability to concentrate on anything for more than 20secs and the scales tip even further.

Theres no irony in my point of view.

if China bans all non-Chinese platforms like Facebook, google, slack, Netflix, roblox, etc, why allow Chinese companies to profit in your country?

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-41398423.amp

in relation to EVs which some mentioned earlier. It’s not about the EU/US stopping competition. Chinas government has massively subsidised their EVs in order to kill off foreign competition. Dumping basically

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/09/major-economies-are-taking-aim-at-china-s-ev-industry-here-s-what-to-know/

Same with solar panels

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_13_1190