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.

But what is out there on TikTok that's so dangerous to the state? Dance videos?

That's is an interesting question.

Actually, there is a lot more. About 30% people (of USA) use TT, ~60% under 30. You guess it, they don't to look only at dance videos. Social media had become a huge source of information for a big chunk of the population.

On TT, and on most social media (SM), what you watch is mainly determined by the recommendation algorithm. This algo can hide subjects the SM can't put ad on but also subjects the they don't like and boost the one they do (shadow ban). That how you politicize SM. That about, the first thing Musk did with Twitter (after firing people).

When it's a state controlled SM, it's more like foreign interference. There is a lot of books about that. It's documented, not a secret of something. Uyghurs for example, have been a subject of ban on TikTok, shadowing it heavily.