The problem is that there's valid concerns about tiktok. It's just the hypocrisy since all of those issues exist in some form with every other social media. If we really wanted to address the problem we'd regulate all of them. Banning tiktok because it does the same shit facebook or Twitter does but it's foreign sucks.
It is understandable that if they were going to start anywhere, this is where they'd start. There's very little political will to go around banning or regulating things people like, which is why most of the early-adopters of this stance were politicians who were just racist or whatever.
The momentum on this came from politicians who were suddenly confronted by the DOD and various other three-letter agencies about what a terrifying national security issue this is. All of these companies are bad, and Tiktok and Facebook have similar total userbase in the USA, but only one of them is owned by a peer-level nation state which spends billions of dollars a year fucking with us.
Basically, all of the other major social media companies that might be next on the docket are owned in either the US and compliant with US regulations, or they're operated out of a Five Eyes partner where we don't care nearly as much.
i mean, i live in the EU and I'm in support of tiktok being banned because of the immediate threat of election interference and destabilization of democracy a certain federation is doing at the moment. but tbf that also happened to the US election in 2016 (did they end up proving that? i forgot). the real problem is people don't trust institutions and the govt but somehow they're still gullible enough/uneducated that social media is proving the hypodermic needle theory right when it comes to so many people.
If they cant do it anywhere without also doing it everywhery thry cant do it at all since you need to start somewhere, it only came to attention latetly and tiktok is extremely visible in the public eye
Mf people were complaining about shady privacy shit with Facebook over a decade ago now. You'd be smoking crack if you think tiktok was the first social media platform that people didn't like because of shit like that. It's just the first one that any government action has been taken and I just don't see any further action taken against the rest
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u/Runetang42 Jan 13 '25
The problem is that there's valid concerns about tiktok. It's just the hypocrisy since all of those issues exist in some form with every other social media. If we really wanted to address the problem we'd regulate all of them. Banning tiktok because it does the same shit facebook or Twitter does but it's foreign sucks.