Putting aside the whole “China Government Bad” propaganda for a moment, how is this any different than Meta or Google and their data collection/use? So it’s okay is a US-based company does it?
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want any of these fuckers to have free rein to our data, and I certainly don’t want them influencing us in any way. If anything, I want them to be more “equal” and include Meta, Google, Apple, and everyone else in their legislation. We need a GDPR of our own.
You’re right that everyone does it. The issue is how much access China has to the data in this case.
I don’t disagree that it’s frightening. I’m suggesting that it’s equally as frightening that any company has the same level of access, if not more.
While I don’t disagree, I’d prefer a law protecting consumer privacy regarding all digital data use but this law was never about protecting consumers. China is an aggressive adversarial state to the United States and its allies. From the perspective of national security it makes sense to limit what data an adversary has of your citizens.
You can’t put aside the fact that China is a hostile power that actively facilitates cyberattacks against the US. There’s a huge difference between the US government being complicit in hacking for the sake of gathering information about threats and the Chinese government being complicit in ransomware and similar actual massively damaging attacks.
I also support limiting everyone else’s data gathering. It’s also a problem. But it is not anywhere near the level of an enemy controlling a malicious propaganda network. TikTok is a huge threat to national security, and the slow play instead of an outright ban has already done huge damage.
