Tiktok has been the only place to see videos about police brutality and one of the main places to see the movement supporting the Palestinian cause.
I feel so much shame as an American that my country did this.
I'd rather have the US foster innovation and let the best company win. TikTok is more entertaining and is growing because it has better/smarter feed algorithms and content creation tools, plan and simple.
Meta was an early innovator in this area but has stagnated due to revenue pressures leading to the over-promotion of low quality content. Netflix has failed to adapt.
Also Tiktok is directly owned by the CCP. It’s barely a private company, so national security concerns are justified.
As you may recall from the Snowden revelations, the US government has high bandwidth data intercept stations installed at major datacenters that are expressly for the purpose of ingesting massive amounts of data. There is no need for "ownership" when this level of cooperation with government exists.
> As you may recall from the Snowden revelations,
That’s a non sequitur, and it doesn’t change the fact that TikTok is owned and operated by a hostile foreign government.
Perhaps, but this is simply logic: Country A imposes tariffs that harm consumers and producers in country A and country B. That is the case before retaliatory tariffs. Once country B imposes its own, now the producers and consumers in both countries have yet more tariffs to deal with.
The leap of logic that is hard for people to grasp is that countries have producers and consumers and many that occupy both roles. A friend of mine had his 3D printing business fail after US retaliatory trade restrictions prvented him from importing 5% of parts for his printers that are mainly available from China. Meanwhile competitors in the US resold 100% China-manufactured printers and still beat him in price in spite of the tariffs. Such an embarrassing example of policy having effects far different from its intentions.
> That’s a non sequitur...
Governments can get control of companies in consequential (privacy, etc.) ways by a variety of means, and it happens everywhere. The Snowden revelations are highly relevant only because you make the claim that the paper ownership or other irrelevant nuance of how China has control over Chinese companies is somehow relevant. It absolutely is not since the end result is exactly the same.
There are many, many accounts of government using soft power to influence American firms to behave in ways that do the bidding of the state,... it is precisely analogous to what China would do with its own firms, regardless of the details.
You’re ashamed that TikTok can continue to operate here so long as it’s divested of CCP control?
hmmm....
I don't think there is anything scary/bad about Americans seeing content that humanizes people who have been dehumanized by the US media for as long as I can remember.