To save itself, TikTok in 2022 offered the U.S. government an extraordinary deal. The video app, owned by a Chinese company, said it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation’s board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code, according to a copy of the company’s proposal. It even offered to give federal officials a kill switch that would shut the app down
It’s not about it being “dangerous” except that it’s a social media company whose interests don’t align with Western governments.
Like, I’m sure they do shady things with data, but that’s not just them.
The difference is China has no reason to listen to any other country about what to censor, and is going to censor what they want instead.
Musk and Zuck do shady shit that harms customers, but at the end of the day Western governments can exert control over them.
If another country has to ask China to censor something, China is also going to want some stuff censored by that country.
US doesn’t care about your data on TT that much, it’s just a trade war. China recently banned a slew of US platforms so US has to respond tit for tat. I’m kinda confused why they’re trying to sell it as something that looks like a major hypocrisy.
Facebook was blocked following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots because protestors with the East Turkestan independence movement were using Facebook as part of their communications network to organize attacks across the city. China has been banning this and other western social media for years. China bans so many western products and content, this is not a tit for tat or they would have done it years ago. The great firewall is insanely authoritarian. Too many Americans greatly underestimate the threat from China.
Apologies, I misspoke. Yes, western social media has been banned since forever and China requires local majority stake for joint ventures.
What I was getting at is that in March China announced they are moving from Microsoft, Intel and AMD for government PCs. I imagine US is quite angry to be losing so many backdoor vectors. US and China are trading big blows now with 100% tariffs on EVs and TT ban.