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Hisham

I'm going to ask a honest question.

As part of keeping my sanity, in recent years I stopped trying to keep track of every little thing going on in the world to the finer details.

So, _if you are in the US_, what is the official explanation that the government is giving for banning TikTok and what are people _in general_ (L&R) perceiving the reason to be?

(Not looking for opinions from abroad, or hot takes foreign or domestic, just a weather report of the political climate on this. Thanks!)

@hisham_hm the main message is that it’s banned due to national security concerns. There’s no real further explanation on what that means. Various politicians, though, more recently alternatively cite concerns about data privacy of Americans or concerns about potential for China to exert influence to use the platform for propaganda. I think it’s fair to say most of us here don’t really buy those reasons, since the US based platforms have those same concerns.

@hisham_hm the prevailing view seems to be that this law was passed to force a sale of an incredibly successful internet business to friendly US interests for profit reasons. There are other whispers that it’s because the government is anticipating a hot war with China, but I personally don’t think the government is that good at thinking ahead.

@hisham_hm Basically just Chinese influence. The algorithm is opaque, could be used to distort public discourse, etc.

Why isn't Facebook/google/etc allowed in China? So some politicians wanted reciprocity.

@hisham_hm the best reason I’ve heard is “during the Cold War we wouldn’t let Russia own a TV station”, which falls out to “foreign nations don’t have free speech rights like people do”. You can argue about company vs nation here, but Grindr had this same problem and was divested, and company folk keep saying national people get to make the buy decision.