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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

Obviously, it isn't about that. Our government just doesn't want anyone but them spying on its citizens.

It isn't even about that. Tiktok is taking market share from FAANGs. Zuckerberg has spent a pretty penny on this Tiktok disinformation campaign and if you look at the members of Congress behind the ban Tiktok bill, most of them purchased huge amounts of Meta stock before introducing it to Congress. It's corruption all the way down.

> Zuckerberg has spent a pretty penny on this Tiktok disinformation campaign

There's more than enough reports from outside the US that credibly allege TikTok is a critical factor in the radicalization and recruitment of the far-right and militant Islamism [1][2][3].

Conspiracies about Zuckerberg wanting to dunk on a competitor aside (that may or may not be real, and I'm heavily inclined to believe they are true), the threat from TikTok is real, this application needs to be exterminated at all cost before China completely tears apart our society.

[1] https://www.bpb.de/lernen/digitale-bildung/werkstatt/560523/...

[2] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/radikalis...

[3] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/hessen/hr-wandern-...

Both assertions can be true at the same time

> There's more than enough reports from outside the US that credibly allege TikTok is a critical factor in the radicalization and recruitment of the far-right and militant Islamism [1][2][3].

You can find literature to support that claim for Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, not just Tiktok. The Making of a Youtube Radical was a big story back in 2019. Facebook won the election for Trump in 2016. Twitter is owned by a Nazi who routinely boost far-right conspiracy theories.

The answer isn't banning Tiktok but passing strong privacy and data legislation that affects all social media platforms. Not just Tiktok. US social media companies have been pulling on the seams of society far before Tiktok arrived.

At least we can tackle Meta, Google and Twitter with domestic courts (and the EU is already turning the screws). With Tiktok, we have about zero ways to influence them. Straight Chinese propaganda right in the brains of our children.

> With Tiktok, we have about zero ways to influence them.

I could swear the US passed a law targeted at TikTok last year. The law was precisely targeted to prevent any collateral damage on any of the American social media companies that are guilty of most or all the bad behavior leveled against TikTok.

> At least we can tackle Meta, Google and Twitter with domestic courts

We don't, and we won't (and these platforms are just as easily manipulated as TikTok), but we can, and that's what matters.

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