what mother russia meant to say was โRight, they compare in the sense that thereโs some overlap. Iโm assuming you meant โthey arenโt comparable at allโ as in โthey arenโt equivalent.โ You might not be thinking like this, but some people say, โItโs okay because at least weโre not as bad as China.โ The U.S. and China arenโt doing the same thing or operating at the same level. China taking it further doesnโt justify what the U.S. is doing.โ
What isnโt? Literally everything is spyware. Every app on your phone has your location, passwords, app tracking, number, email, credit card, search history, etc. everything online is spyware. All other apps will sell your data to China and anywhere else they want to or will pay enough. The literal only difference is that China isnโt paying a third party for our data, aka another company isnโt making money off of selling our information. Thatโs the only reason the government cares about it.
Every social media platform feeds data to the users. My TikTok feed (half a year ago bc I deleted it) was identical to all my other apps with food recipes and art and things. Whatever data china was supposedly feeding me, I received it from all other medias as well. If we are worrying about information and propaganda, who should get to decide what people can or canโt see and what is or isnโt propaganda?
Everyone is constantly exposed to propaganda, both from the American government and foreign ones, from companies and corporations, etc. but putting laws and restrictions about who can show us propaganda is a very effective way to have the government get full control over what propaganda the people will see.
If they made a law like โcompanies and corporations canโt be paid to change or influence usersโ algorithms or to push any kind of unsponsored contentโ then anything outside of ads wouldnโt be allowed to be targeted unless the user showed interest in them. But they donโt want that, because they like propaganda.
Plus, even if the new owners of tiktok were explicitly found to be pushing an agenda with its users, it is still entirely up to the people to decide if they still want to use the app. The government should not be allowed to shut down an app for the entire country because they donโt like the propaganda or content shared on it.
Personally, I donโt care about TikTok and havenโt had it in a little over half a year and when I did have it, I hardly used it, BUT I donโt like the legal precedent it sets for the government to do this. If itโs allowed now, it will be allowed later. If the government can claim something is bad therefore no one in the USA can have access to it and we need a whole new app only for us that canโt have any investors involved that they donโt like or approve of.
How is it the government can demand no Chinese based investors and a whole new app but canโt demand that active government officials canโt vote or set laws for the companies they are actively invested in? It might seem a little off topic but the whole point of this is corruption and propaganda and our government just doesnโt like it when other countries do the same things to us that they are actively doing. Itโs like a cat getting angry that a different cat is playing with one of their mice.
They found no evidence of it being even remotely suspect. However, there are mountains of evidence of Facebook stealing your information and selling it, which is a crime. So if your racist ass is pissed at TikTok for face filters then you should be ready to go to war against Zuck
Well considering China and the US are fighting for global dominance and China consistently steals Intellectual property and collects information on American citizens for their own good. But regardless not one American app has a morality code when it comes to selling data. The US army got caught buying data from a Quran app on the App Store a while back.