And what is the evidence for it being a Chinese spying platform? Is it owned by a Chinese company? Is there any hard evidence? Why is it so controversial?
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the US government doesn’t like how little control they have of the information flowing over there
This is the best answer.
A motivation that hasn’t been mentioned yet:
Every successful attempt so far by the US government to control what Americans may and may not access on the internet has been rooted in pre-existing legal restrictions on the content, or on access to it. It’s just been things like piracy, CSAM, drug trafficking and the like - things that are illegal in and of themselves, so banning sites that are involved with them has just been a response to thecrxisting illegality.
This is the first time that the US government has succeeded in banning a site without pointing to violations of any existing laws, but simply because they’ve decided to do so.
That’s a significant precedent, and to would-be tyrants, an extremely useful one.
This happens all the time. Almost every country has laws about foreign ownership of media and telecom. Here in Canada, Americans cannot come in and just buy up all the media companies. The consortium that bought my cell provider included a wealthy Egyptian national who was forced to divest before the sale could be finalized.
China was forced to divest from Grindr in the US like five years ago for the exact same reasons.
The only thing that’s really weird here is that China is refusing to do so and would rather burn it to the ground than sell it. That’s at least in part because having all that information - including granular tracking data - on 50% of the US population is an insanely powerful intelligence tool.
That’s not a motivation, but rather an (admittedly astute) comment on the legal context. Appreciated nonetheless.
Establishing that precedent just in and of itself would most certainly be more than enough motivation for anyone with a desire to manipulate or limit public discourse and access to the authority by which future bans can and will be implemented.
Appealing to an out of touch, jingoistic voting base and cracking down on a social media platform where “the youths” are exposed to “woke commie socialist propaganda”. Also, yes it is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.
Your link provided me with more proper information than your biased quick take, so thanks for that, I guess.
Two reasons, both related to being owned by a Chinese company.
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It’s mining data for the Chinese company.
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The Chinese company can make their algorithm present whatever they want. So they can play up criticism of the US and downplay criticism of China.
The degree of separation between the communist government and private companies is uncertain, so yeah.
Finally, someone who seems to be providing an answer based on objective fact rather than their own political perspective.
I’m getting the sense that the issue is simply that ByteDance is a Chinese company and their data farming is suspected of being accessible to the CCP, which may effectively be a means of spying on American citizens and as misinformation tactics. Not really any different the other way around, of course, but at least that makes sense as a rationale for banning it in the U.S.
There are problems with the law as well. The main one is that Tik Tok buys a whole lot of data about Americans and their browser history etc from data brokers. So they don’t necessarily need the app to gather information. Comparisons of the Tik Tok app vs it’s counterpart in China exist and they paint a pretty significant picture of the differences and similarities that explain how it could be used to push a narrative or propaganda. Barring that though two things can be true. It can be true that Tik Tok is a danger to national security, and also be lobbied against by American Tech companies.
What we’re seeing is that this law was the result of several things and doesn’t just have one singular aim. Anyone who says it’s just about one singular thing just doesn’t want to admit the validity of the other arguments because it ruins how they feel about the federal government, Tik Tok, China, Trump, Biden etc.
Moreover while there’s no proof it HAS been done, inserting some new bit of code in a Chinese owned app could perform security breaches inside the user’s phones. I’m not even sure they’d be interested in MY info, but they sure would like to have access to my company’s network complete with VPN.
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In Congress, during a private session, intelligence on their spying was presented.
That and the unanimous SCOTUS decision really say something as to what our government knows.
They want them to force to sell it to a US company, so the US interests can be forced onto the algorithm…
AIPAC wants it gone because Gen Z can’t easily be manipulated into thinking Israel is a peace-loving democracy surrounded by savage terrorists.
It’s because it pissed off the wrong people. The initial push to ban tiktok was by Trump and republicans after TTers organized a mass RSVP of one of Trump’s events and he spent a lot of money on extra staff and ended up performing in an empty stadium.
That failed and Trump was mocked. 4 years later, it was used to counter zionist propaganda, and that got the democrats on board. Here’s Blinken admitting as much.
Additionally, Insta is TT’s biggest competitor, and FB, which owns Insta, lobbys to the tune of 20M/year.
Because Facebook can’t compete fairly so they’re using regulatory capture to kill it.
Technically the Chinese government could also use it to spy on Americans and that’s a problem because they’d be taking Er Jerbs - 'Muricans should spy on 'Muricans.
China blocks much of the internet its citizens can access in order to preserve its ideological grip on their country. I share concerns about data privacy in the U.S., but I would definitely be more concerned about a foreign government (especially an enemy of the U.S.) having access to our private data than our own government or even our own corporations.
Corporations don’t have residency in specific countries. They are subject to the laws of all the countries they do business in. It is quite fair to be more concerned about China than other jurisdictions but… don’t underestimate the greed of corporations. Meta itself has been specifically entangled in election interference before via Cambridge Analytica.
Yeah, I don’t trust corporations to do the right thing either, but at least their motivations are based on greed, not nationalistic concerns.
So that Trump can swoop in and “save” it.
After seeing the video the ceo posted, as well as the messages from when tiktok got banned and then unbanned, I’m starting to think this is the reason
All social media apps generate enough data about their users to engineer effective disinformation campaigns, influence elections and sway public opinion.
The US would prefer that China has to ask Russia to do that, rather than having direct access.
It also helps the china hawks in the US government who want war by contributing to the perception of China as implacably malicious.
It’s about narrative control. Cia has tools to promote/restrict content with x and facebook. (read twitterfiles). They don’t have it for tiktok.
And on the flip side it is very dangerous to give Chinese intelligence direct access to propagandize to Americans. Look at how successful Iranian intel was on getting people on Reddit to back The Houthi Militia.
In short: Culture war
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