[jtaft]

Anyone have alternative arguments why TikTok is being banned?

I heard arguments since TikTok doesn’t have public stock that wealthy individuals are losing out. Same with very liberal ideology is on TikTok, with is trying to be controlled.

[ricardobeat]

As other social networks, it is a cesspool of hate and misinformation, damaging to mental health, and can be used to manipulate public opinion very effectively at scale.

[wincy]

Then why only TikTok? It’s obviously protectionist nonsense for US social media companies.

[shagie]

TikTok was used by its parent company ByteDance to reveal location information in order to correlate the accounts of journalists and former employees.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...

> TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.

> The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned.

> They looked at IP addresses of journalists who were using the TikTok app in an attempt to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information. The effort, which targeted former BuzzFeed reporter Emily Baker-White and Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle among other reporters, was unsuccessful, but resulted in at least four members of staff based in both the US and China improperly accessing the data, according to an email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen. All four have been fired. Company officials said they were taking additional steps to protect user data.

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The corresponding part is that the CCP has a stake in ByteDance and control over a board seat.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...

[nateoearth]

TikTok's leadership answers to the CCP. It is a tool for propaganda and psychological warfare against the United States. We're going to ban TikTok for the same reason China banned Facebook, IG, Google, human rights organizations' websites, etc.: as a countermeasure against psychological warfare.

It's true that banning TikTok will also benefit US social media companies. This is similar to how we restrict the manufacture of advanced weaponry to US manufacturers. Yes, this kind of policy creates an advantage for domestic producers. And yes, it also serves important national security interests. Both can be true at the same time.