Trudeau government bans TikTok from operating in Canada

Instead of the laser focus on TikTok as a threat, it would be better for the US and Canada to have real data protection laws that would apply equally to TikTok, Meta, Google, Apple, and X. What the EU has done is far from perfect but it bans the worst practices. The Chinese can buy all of the information they want on Americans and Canadians from ad brokers, who will happily sell them everything they need to track individuals' locations.

Perhaps the way to get anti-regulation politicians on board with this is for someone to do what was done to Robert Bork and legally disclose lots of personal info on members of Congress/Parliament, obtained from data brokers and de-anonymized.

It is not about the data. It’s about a foreign government controlling the algorithm that decides what millions of people see, and their ability to shape public opinion through that.

Like imagine if China owned CNN and the New York Times and decided what stories they could publish.

As opposed to the domestic government controlling the algorithm that decides what millions of people see, and their ability to shape public opinion through that.

Well, yeah actually. If anyone is going to control it, it's best to be us controlling our own messaging.

As a citizen of a country, as much as I would love to believe in free exchange of information, it's better to limit what enemies are able to broadcast directly to our phones. that's a commons with a lot of tragedies in it.

This sounds good in theory but as a Canadian I often wonder how much our government's actions are on behalf of us the people as opposed to well financed or politically powerful special interests. It looks to me like many Canadians other are wondering that as well.

However, that said, I do agree with your broader point. I'm suspicious of Tik Tok and the Chinese government's intentions and I think banning it was a good move.