Summary
Ahead of the 2024 election, Generation Z has sparked a trend on TikTok, “canceling out” family members’ votes by voting opposite their Trump-supporting relatives. Many young women post videos showing them voting for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, contrasting with family members supporting Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Although Gen Z voters lean slightly toward Harris, a significant portion supports Trump. With over 47 million early votes cast, polls show a tight race, especially in key swing states.
No it’s not. It’s because it, like other Chinese companies, are at risk of being browbeaten by their government into providing whatever information they have on American users to use as they wish. One can easily argue what kind of risk that actually poses, but that’s why they’re trying to ban it. Unless you have some sort of proof…
Fair point, but if they were at all actually interested in American privacy, they’d not only target TikTok. Facebook, Twitter and Google have all been actually proven to have leaked or sold user information to anyone that’ll pay (including American adversaries).
While I don’t disagree that the risk is there with TikTok, all they can bring to bear against it is speculation and what-ifs. They have concrete proof of other companies willingly doing what they’re afraid TikTok MIGHT do.
Absolutely, they should target all of them.
However, you’re ignoring the difference here; that TikTok is a Chinese company, and in that kind of system, you can’t really separate “private” companies and the CCP.
It would be trivial for China to get data from TikTok.
Your comment lead me to this article (CNN), because I kept hearing stuff like bytedance is primarily owned by American or non-chinese companies, blah blah blah. So I appreciate you prompting me to look further into it. Seems pretty cut and dry that you’re correct. (Wasn’t just this article that pointed it out, but it was the most inclusive and concise one I found)
All that said, what information can china get from the app that they don’t already have, or can already purchase from any of the other data collectors/sellers available? Is it just the fact they can do it for free?
There’s also the option that perhaps the CCP will decide (or maybe has already) to influence what Americans see on the app. Perfectly feasible, but in my experience, it shows you what it knows you like to see. My feed is primarily related to human rights, recent politics, American history, science and tech, and cute dog/cat videos. My wife’s feed is primarily horse/animal, music, entertaining things. creepy old dudes complain all they see is half dressed teenagers dancing (we all know why they’re seeing that). If they’re interfering with the algorithm to influence American politics (like Russia did with Facebook), I think they’re doing so poorly.
It’s probably a mix of things, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the politicians most heavily advocating for banning it expect to get some big payout. The first I’ve heard of the TikTok ban was from Trump who was trying to coerce them to sell it to Microsoft (I expect he would’ve got some financial benefit from this). In terms of the data-collection, potentially harmful and biased algorithms, and data exfiltration by government agencies, it’s not like the U.S. companies are much better.
And guess what? If you’ve ever sold anything on TikTok, Bytedance (and the CCP) has your SSN, asking with a treasure trove of personal info! Byebye, identity!
