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It is absurd that users are not angry at TikTok for not protecting their data. Instead, TikTok weaponized the user base and made them belief that it is a free speech problem while they collected swaths of data and allowed it to leave US jurisdiction, into the hands of the Chinese government.

And Democrats just sucked at messaging. Its not a "TikTok ban". The message should have been about data protection.

And yes, it would be far better to pass something like the GDPR. But I guess, with the power of the US media companies, the TikTok law was a compromise.




tiktok data is in the US, Malaysia, and Singapore.


The US government claims otherwise. And even if data is not flowing to China directly, the threat is there from a legal point of view. Data is leaving US jurisdiction anyway. And China could force ByteDance to hand over data that is stored in Malaysia and Singapore.


so for data protection reasons, we only allow editorial discretion from US-domiciled companies?

yeah i fully reject this jingoistic reasoning


The law and also the SCOTUS ruling don't even touch editorial discretion. TikTok is free to do whatever as long user data is safe from being accessed by an adversary like the Chinese. Its TikTok who made it about editorial discretion and free speech. They failed with that argument. And I agree with that.




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