Summary
Ahead of the 2024 election, Generation Z has sparked a trend on TikTok, “canceling out” family members’ votes by voting opposite their Trump-supporting relatives. Many young women post videos showing them voting for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, contrasting with family members supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Although Gen Z voters lean slightly toward Harris, a significant portion supports Trump. With over 47 million early votes cast, polls show a tight race, especially in key swing states.
No it’s not. It’s because it, like other Chinese companies, are at risk of being browbeaten by their government into providing whatever information they have on American users to use as they wish. One can easily argue what kind of risk that actually poses, but that’s why they’re trying to ban it. Unless you have some sort of proof…
Fair point, but if they were at all actually interested in American privacy, they’d not only target TikTok. Facebook, Twitter and Google have all been actually proven to have leaked or sold user information to anyone that’ll pay (including American adversaries).
While I don’t disagree that the risk is there with TikTok, all they can bring to bear against it is speculation and what-ifs. They have concrete proof of other companies willingly doing what they’re afraid TikTok MIGHT do.
It’s probably a mix of things, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the politicians most heavily advocating for banning it expect to get some big payout. The first I’ve heard of the TikTok ban was from Trump who was trying to coerce them to sell it to Microsoft (I expect he would’ve got some financial benefit from this). In terms of the data-collection, potentially harmful and biased algorithms, and data exfiltration by government agencies, it’s not like the U.S. companies are much better.
No argument on US companies not being much better. At least there’s some paperwork that gets in the way.
If Congress cared about privacy, they’d abolish Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and the NSA, and enforce the 4th Amendment.
Instead they try to stiffle the first amendment because it’s hosted in the enemy of the week’s borders.