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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

TikTok isn't free software. It's at best an enormous social media company designed to profit off of manipulating naive users' attention, and at worst an arm of one of the largest world governments.

I'm sure most people on HN simply don't care about TikTok at all and don't comment, but among those who do care it's hardly surprising that it's harder to drum up support for TikTok than for the idea of encryption itself.

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I don't think it being free software is necessary. There is plenty of anger when Apple blocks some non-free software from the App Store, like the whole Epic/Fortnite situation, or many other cases with smaller indie developers. It seems much, much worse for the government to be doing that, doesn't it? With the Apple situation, you can choose to use Android or Linux instead, if it's the government, you... need to emigrate to use the software?

Epic vs Apple is at a different point along the spectrum—there are plenty of people who argue that Apple is within their rights (and even pro-consumer) to have the rules that they do, but there are plenty that are opposed.

Epic is more palatable than a social media company but less obviously good than encryption.

>It's at best an enormous social media company designed to profit off of manipulating naive users' attention, and at worst an arm of one of the largest world governments.

This is absurd. you sound as ridiculous as the politicians. If they are concerned pass data protection laws for every company

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