Setting aside the far more malevolent impact of American power, China has no way to use my data to oppress me. The US does, and routinely uses social media data against its own citizens and people abroad.
If China destabilizes US democracy (more than Russia already has) that can definitely hurt you.
But it's not a competition. Both are bad, both should be resisted. I want TikTok banned AND I want comprehensive laws forbidding Facebook and domestic government from abusing my information.
Neither China nor Russia strike me as the main forces eroding US democracy (or whatever passes for democracy here), and the interference goes both ways. The idea that TikTok could drive the erosion of democratic processes in the US strikes me as silly, especially considering domestic forces like militarization and economic stagnation.
I'm actually all for a TikTok ban as long as we also ban other social media. I think it's all toxic. But the excessive focus on TikTok is just yellow peril/red scare nonsense in pursuit of a new cold war.
>The idea that TikTok could drive the erosion of democratic processes in the US strikes me as silly, especially considering domestic forces like militarization and economic stagnation.
With respect, have you been asleep for the past 7 years? The existence and tangible effects of foreign disinformation and manipulation campaigns are known and well-studied by this point. It's not unique to the US, the tragic situation in Myanmar would likely not have occurred without the existence of Facebook..
> I'm actually all for a TikTok ban as long as we also ban other social media. I think it's all toxic. But the excessive focus on TikTok is just yellow peril/red scare nonsense in pursuit of a new cold war.
We’re talking about an instant, direct, and unobservable line into the psyches of tens of millions of American teenagers.
The only reason this is even an argument is deep influence peddling and a staggering complacency towards the real long term motives of the CCP. Which are related.
This reads more like yellow peril hyperbole than reasoned arguments. The CCP is deeply unpopular in the US, and most US institutions are engaged in a demonization campaign against China.
TikTok is horrible and toxic. It should be banned, or at least tightly age-restricted. But I have seen no evidence they're worse than or a bigger threat than other US-based social media empires, and the proponents of those ideas tend to gesture towards vague communist conspiracies rather than point to observable evidence.
This kind of fear about large-scale communist subversion was common back in the 1950s too, yet that generation of American kids turned out mostly fine.
