Is the Clock Ticking for TikTok

newstatesman.com

1 point·jmfldn··5 comments

"US policymakers are turning their attention to TikTok following the Chinese spy balloon debacle."

I wonder how serious this is?

I think it will get banned sooner or later if it doesn't become naturally irrelevant like the likes of MySpace.

Part of me is very against banning things like this, but I just can't see how this isn't a massive potential risk that we should avoid. The precautionary principle applies here for me.

I guess this will accelerate the already pretty severe balkanisation of the internet, but maybe we were hopelessly naive to ever think that we could have an internet that transcended geopolitical relationships between the free world and the rest of the world.

I think that balkanization is unavoidable now. Even between US and EU. The EU is now planning to mandate a digital ID meaning anonymity will be something of the past, and personally that means I will disengage even more from the "mainstream" internet. I've already left all social media, Google etc due to the pervasive tracking but it's becoming harder to do stuff like banking etc that way (on a phone without Google play for example).

I think the US is a bit more hesitant to identify every internet user due to their penchant for freedom but of course they have a very bad history with convert surveillance.

I'm kinda hoping a darknet community will emerge of people who are averse to all this legislation. A bit like the early internet was. But without the rough edges of Tor. But so far that hasn't happened.

> “TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news,” wrote one of the bill’s co-sponsors Mike Gallagher

Makes them talk like this.

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