Bipartisan Bill To Ban TikTok Is Unworkable and Unnecessary | Reason - Elizabeth Nolan Brown:
December 14, 2022 - "There are several problems with a bipartisan proposal in Congress to ban TikTok, the popular video-sharing app that originated in China. For one thing, it's technologically infeasible. It's also pointless. Fears about TikTok are overblown, and any real threats can be mitigated by way less drastic measures than banning ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) from doing business here....
"Some suggest that since the app is based in China, it must be a tool of Chinese propaganda. This is probably the silliest fear, since if there were a widespread pro-China or anti-American video campaign circulating on TikTok, it would not fly under the radar. But even if this is going on: so what? There's nothing stopping Americans from offering their own propaganda on the app. Most people on TikTok aren't even engaging with political content in the first place.... Besides, Chinese propagandists can set up accounts on any social media platform and spread propaganda (probably much more covertly) that way. They don't need to rely on an app owned by a Chinese company.
"The more prevalent fear seems to be that TikTok will be a tool of Chinese surveillance. The company's U.S. operations have strenuously denied this, noting that they store U.S. user data in the U.S. and that China-based employees won't have access to U.S. data, among other measures meant to safeguard user privacy. This means that, theoretically, U.S. user data is not going to the Chinese government, nor is TikTok letting the Chinese government use it to spy on U.S. users.
"There may be reason to be skeptical that this never happens. Forbes recently reported that ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department "planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen." However, Forbes would not report on the reason for the proposed surveillance, and does not know if it actually came to fruition. So it's hard to say whether this is a real reason for concern. Sure, this could be a super-creepy situation in which the Chinese communist government asked ByteDance to spy on someone for political reasons. But, for all we know, the user in question was a violent criminal and had a court order or a request from U.S. authorities to find their location.
"In any event, we needn't be naive about the Chinese government to realize that the risk for ordinary TikTok users is negligible. If you're a U.S.-based Chinese national critical of the Communist Party of China, you might think twice about using TikTok. And the same goes if you're a U.S. government official or a journalist reporting on highly sensitive subjects or something like that. Basically, anyone who has reason to think the Chinese government could want to spy on them might want to exercise caution. But the idea that the Chinese government would want to surveil the location of random American citizens is silly....
"Anyone who suggests otherwise just wants to drum up fear and anti-Chinese sentiment. Which is to say: Americans should be more fearful of the propaganda being put out by anti-TikTok crusaders like this bill's sponsors, and of their authoritarian impulses, than of ByteDance using TikTok to target them in nefarious ways.
"In enforcing this plan, the U.S. would be engaging in the very sort of behavior we pan countries like China and Russia for doing. They're attempting to capriciously limit citizen access to tools of communication and entertainment and stop law-abiding businesses from operating here, all based on vague anti-foreign sentiment."
Read more: https://reason.com/2022/12/14/bipartisan-bill-to-ban-tiktok-is-unworkable-and-unnecessary/
Should we ban TikTok in Canada? | True North - Anthony Furey:
December 18, 2022 - "In the US, there is a bi-partisan effort to ban China’s popular social media app TikTok over fears that the app could be used to spy on users and that it could pose a serious threat to national security.... In Canada, the Trudeau government indicated that they are monitoring the Chinese app for security threats. What do you think? Is it time to ban TikTok in Canada?
"Anthony Furey discusses."
Read more: https://tnc.news/2022/12/18/furey-tiktok/
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