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Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power
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this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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Yikes, what a flawed set of premises.
" What if Canada did the same thing to the US? They did!"
No, they didn't. Canada tried to boost Canadian media presence on American streaming platforms.
Making sure gooby gets an international viewing is very different from transmitting information to an overtly hostile government known for cyber attacks on its international peers.
"The platform isn't a national security threat".
It's a fact that the app TikTok is based off of, Douyin, sends the private data of every user straight to bytedance, owned in powerful minority stake by the Chinese government and that tiktok did the same thing with US user data until they promised they stopped a couple years ago.
As of January 2024 however, whoops, US citizen data(names, birthdates, location) is still being sent back to bytedance: https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203?mod=followamazon
It's not some baseless concern, it's a national security consequence against data disclosures that were already carried out and have continued to this year despite assurances 2 years ago that data leaks to bytedance are not happening.
"Instrument of soft power"
Marvel movies becoming super popular internationally is an example of soft power. Gathering the personal information of users with a continuing precedent attacking US digital infrastructures and democratic institutions is not soft power, it is hostile statecraft.
I am not a proponent of monolithic tech companies nor am I particularly aligned against international competition in tech supremacy, but this ban isn't about theoretical cultural competition.
This tiktok ban is about the recent gathering of personal information that can be used to assess and attack digital infrastructures and electoral behaviors by entities that are continually attacking digital infrastructures and electoral processes, entities focused on consolidating power not within some international free market of soft cultural influence but by gathering and consolidating power and using that power to forward state ambitions.
@Varyk@sh.itjust.works @davel@lemmy.ml
If we wanted national data and communication security we would shut off the transatlantic cables and physically separate the U.S. Internet from the rest of the world. All matters of diplomacy could be conducted in public courts at the coastlines instead of over telephone wires and emails. Problem solved. We could set up a nice star-spangled curtain and let all the globalists rot from the fallout.
"Afraid of your neighbor's dog? Never leave your room, add a harness to your bed and strap in, wear plate armor at all times".
Not exactly practical.
There are ways to improve security without immobilizing yourself.
Blocking the widespread distribution and use of an app that sends personal and national data to a hostile government actively collecting and using that data to conduct digital and electoral attacks is not immobilizing, it's a simple step with zero downside that safeguards hundreds of millions of people.
Actually, I have time, so let's dismantle your comment.
"Keeping thieves and robbers from entering your house is not, 'immobilizing yourself.' "
Nobody said it is.
"The idea that America would be immobilized by taking care of itself instead of carousing around with the rest of the world is just silly."
Something nobody said again, but:
Thinking that having literally enough land to fit people and resources to perpetuate some contemporary level of technology ignores all of history and every metric of national success.
You know who had overabundant physical resources and separated themselves from other civilizations?
Incans.
"Canada could also seal off its borders and in a thousand years from now still be going strong."
So we ignore Canada's transportation imports, machinery imports, electronics imports, plastics imports, energy imports， services that alone account for 1/3 of Canadian GDP, then Canada will "go strong"?
5 winter months a year without cars, oil or modern manufacturing to compensate for the weather, not to mention financial services, infrastructure services, science in every form; they're sunk.
Oh and we can't forget that you are wishing away Canadian exports, which also account for 1/3 of Canadian GDP.
Your canadian isolationist whim has zero legs to stand on and 1.5 trillion dollars of debt annually.
"International relations are the cause of war" in the same way that air is slowly poisoning you to death.
Such a zoomed-out, irrelevant statement ignores literally every significant factor of conscious reality.
There are two hundred ish countries.
Show me the thriving utopias that refuse to interact with any other countries.
You're arguing the international merits of "separate but equal" while ignoring how much the United States and other countries have benefited from open borders.
You are wrong top to bottom here on every short-sighted jingoist allegation.
You haven't entered a discussion, you've cried incredibly short-sighted neoconservative talking points that I've completely taken apart in my other reply to you.
I attacked your ridiculous comment, not your character, unlike your personal insults.
You're labeling me a "reactionary" because I didn't call you any of the slurs you listed.
You might want to sit in that a while.