Obviously other countries should ban US services as US government could (huh, “could”) use them to control software on millions of devices and drive narratives to divide %nation placeholder%? :-)
Jeez the level of hypocrisy.
Principles that work in a free society work within and between free societies. They don't work on an international scale between nations that are opposed to each other, geopolitically, the incentives are all wrong.
Leaving morals and ideology aside, simply strategically, Russia, China and the US are all wise to distrust each other and put limits on how each other's corporations can act within their boundaries. It's not the same situation between allies. Like, sure the US can use facebook to mess with Germany or the UK politically, but their incentives aren't to destabilize their allies.
But not allowing their own citizens to access content produced in that problematic country smacks of Soviet-style cold war isolation. Or, hell, the Chinese government's block on any outside news or media it doesn't agree with.
Strategically, if the US (and others) want to remain free, democratic societies, doing things like banning TikTok is a step in the wrong direction.
Nobody is talking about that, though. Almost none of the content on Tik-Tok is produced in China. They're just talking about banning _the corporation_ from operating in the united states.
Why not? Take that “green” politics for example that lead Germany to close a lot of atomic plants and, now, basically, at mercy of US gas (which production surged 80%, if I’m not mistaken)
And then US subsidies to move production to US so that some VW plant is cheaper in US than in Germany
“This other government is provably controlling information flow and punishing thoughtcrime” is plenty of justification to be suspicious of China’s motives in a way that doesn’t feel blatantly hypocritical to me given that we are on the receiving end of similar suspicion by our allies and enemies.
It's _extremely_ common for people with NSA or similar experience to have very senior positions at US tech companies, and there's a reason for that. It's nothing formal, it's more that having friendly people on both sides of the fence is mutually beneficial for the government and for those companies.
You don’t understand, it’s different (c).
Data collection is the issue politicians are presenting, but I think the actual worry is in the other direction: the influence the Chinese govt can have over the US population through algorithmic and explicit feed changes.