I’ll tell you a secret you might have missed.

It’s not about the privacy.

It’s about a foreign country of similar power levels having the ability to shape your people’s political opinions.

They’re shitting themselves because it’s one of the first times it’s happened to them instead of them doing it to someone else.

new user freshly connected to internet, would you rather:

-waste your precious time and attention on hypercapitalist hellscape headquartered in usa, or

-waste your precious time and attention on hypercapitalist hellscape headquartered in china

The key difference is that American Government agencies don't have access to the information TikTok steals from its users.

Edit: This comment implied the US has easy access to the data from companies like Facebook.

True but also true: you are comparing multinational corporations to the Chinese government, who is currently waging cold war against Western states. That's the quiet part they're taking care not to say loud, hence posturing.

Americans when Canadians say they'd prefer TikTok spying vs an American company:

but seriously. I want no one to have my data, but if someone HAD to have it, I would prefer TikTok over anything from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, etc..

My country wont export me to China if I post something negative or pirate something. My country will export me to the US if they come banging on my door. I am quite literally safer letting China have a bit of my data.

Has everyone forgotten when Zuck was brought before congress and grilled about Facebook? True, the reps merely embarrassed themselves through their own ignorance, but being ineffectual is not the same as hypocracy.

i'd rather be spied on by an allied country, or my own, than a somewhat hostile country.

Both are bad.

It's like picking on a younger sibling.

It's okay when you, the older sibling, do it. But when a stranger does it, you kick their ass.

Xenophobia (from Ancient Greek ξένος (xénos) 'strange, foreign, alien', and φόβος (phóbos) 'fear') is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange.

I remember articles in the early 00s about how China wouldn't allow Google to operate there and a big deal was made about "the great firewall of China" and how it was all about censorship, but now that China has an influential internet service, US congress is demanding they hand over ownership of US operations to a US company.

Hypocrisy at its finest.

its almost like foreign governments collecting information about your population is a bad thing for your people and your government, or something.

Now do American politicians when an elementary school is attacked by a gunman.