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.

I think most people in western society trust their own government to care for their welfare way more that they trust the Chinese government.

'Government' can't care. It's just an agreed upon idea, not a thing with feelings. It is a form of anthropomorphising to say it cares. 'Government' is the idea of a structure that many people believe and act as if it is true. This belief and consequent effort by so many allows it to take a material expression in our lives. Like a group of software engineers might envisage a game or solution, so for government - except way more people are involved. Neither government nor software cares though - they're not that type.