Cool, now let’s ban Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and every single social media platform that does the same exact thing as TikTok. I have never used TikTok, but this is fucking bullshit. Facebook literally ruined elections and lives around the world.
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Tell me, how many countries’ governments has China knocked over in the last century as compared to the US CIA?
How many countries did the US drop bombs on in the last decade, and how many did China?
It’s not even close. In terms of physical violence the US is the world’s #1 exporter.
Lets drop this whole “lesser of two evils” thing […] it certainly doesnt work with comparing governments.
I think it is deeply unwise to take that to heart.
I grew up deep in the American Midwest, surrounded by Evangelical-leaning Christian fundamentalism. Out there, committing one sin was considered as bad as committing a hundred (see also: Matt 5, James 2:10). They dropped the whole “lesser of two evils” thing, and you know what happened? They treated gays the same way they treated murderers, because the two sins were equally easy to condemn. They put rapists in pulpits because in their eyes, molesting a child was just as easy to forgive as ogling an adult.
When you tell people to reject nuance in ethics, that there is no “greater evil,” you remove 90% of their moral compass. They become pliable and easily manipulated by whoever can seize power or respect (see also: Trump).
Every person has flaws, and every system, government, or ideology created by people is likewise flawed. If we refuse to judge the severity of those flaws, refuse acknowledge that there are lesser evils in government, then we claim our own ideologies are no better than fascism – after all, both have their sins, and we just claimed that all sins are equal.
I thought that US was the country of freedom, but turns out that the freedom is just to racists, nazis and for them to fuck up other countries.
Because China is collecting information from millions of US citizens. Plus they control what the US citizens can see and interact with. US has no control over Tik Tok and that scares them. Why are Facebook and X not banned? Because Facebook and X are US based have to comply with the US regulators and share every collected information with the government.
You do know that the overwhelming majority of investment and control in TikTok is already based in the US, and the only Chinese national involved with the app was the creator who already cashed out and retired a long time ago?
It will be interesting to see if tiktoks newest big selling point (relatively free from US influence) will be able to offset it’s loss in users.
It’s likely that they will form a new organization in the US, so they can operate in that country and still have Tik Tok alive. My expectation is that the US based Tik Tok would still interact with the world, but block China.
Any sale would have to be approved by the Chinese government so that is definitely not happening.
It’s doubtful that Tiktok would even agree to sell and there is precedent in the courts that a Tiktok ban is unconstitutional considering it’s already been blocked in Montana.
Then there’s the entire notion over the fact that Apple is ALREADY under fire for anti-competitive practices involving the app store and remove the ability for all iDevices to access the app with no other way to access it outside of the app store will just add more fuel to that case.
The US encourages international business competition, but not if you do it better than they do.
