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.

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

Okay. Now imagine CNN and NYTimes and Fox News being coerced into publishing or not publishing info because a US gov agency demands it. Or how about the US gov pressuring Meta and Twitter to change their algos around very specific topics? You don't need to imagine it actually.

So why is that less of a concern than China controlling a media delivery service?

It's less of a concern because it hasn't happened, and -- assuming Trump doesn't "suspend the constitution" -- can't constitutionally happen. If it does happen, then yes, I will be incredibly concerned about it, more than whatever China is doing.

But right now, today, we have a media delivery service, controlled by China, that millions of Americans use. That's a real, present concern.