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Comment by TheDong | Hacker News Reader

If spying and influencing vulnerable youths is the problem, shouldn't we be getting EU-like privacy laws and anti-social-media laws instead?

Youths are just as able to get addicted to chinese-produced content on instagram and youtube as tiktok, and all 3 of those apps use algorithms that optimize for roughly the same thing (making you watch more ads and contents, profit).

Other companies collect similar amount of our vulnerable youth's private information, also for the same reason (to target ads).

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You've missed the point. It's plenty easy to find articles that clearly explain what the point is (in relation to this ban), so I'm not going to waste the time trying to explain it again myself.

I'll just note that the action that sealed the deal on this ban was TikTok directing its users to call their representatives to oppose the ban, and flooding their phone lines. It was a fortuitously incompetent display of capability, given the actual main issue.

It's kinda interesting reading the comments on the TikTok ban. A lot of them, including yours, seem blind (willfully or not) to the actual major issues involved, then post confidently while centering on some peripheral issue (or non issue) like it was the most important thing.

This is a laughably naïve view of Chinese-owned companies and the total, I repeat total, amount of control China's one-party state wields over those entities.

> If spying and influencing vulnerable youths is the problem, shouldn't we be getting EU-like privacy laws and anti-social-media laws instead?

TikTok just massively influenced the Romanian elections (in the EU) by intentionally turning a blind eye to $millions of ad spend by Russia for a pro-Russian candidate. Despite all those laws.

TikTok is an asset of China that's clear as day. Sure, many times very awful things have been waved away by simply using the phrase "national security". In this case, that phrase is accurate. It's an absurd national security risk to have one of the most influential platforms in a Western country to be an asset of China. This is the reality we live in. It's unfortunate, but it's the way it is. Dancing around the elephant in the room is an incredible waste of time.

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