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?

This can't be a serious question.

US Government likes US Government control because it's themselves.

They don't want an adversary to have control. Is the distinction not obvious??

I'm very serious.

> US Government likes US Government control because it's themselves.

I know. That doesn't tell me why China controlling a social media algorithm is inherently any worse from yours or my perspective.

> They don't want an adversary to have control.

Is the "adversary" claim not undermined by them being a primary trade partner?

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

>> US Government likes US Government control because it's themselves.

> I know. That doesn't tell me why China controlling a social media algorithm is inherently any worse from yours or my perspective.

Why is it less of a concern to you if you control your bank account than if I do?

If we're not making obvious distinctions today, you should give me your bank account credentials, since we're all the same.

>> They don't want an adversary to have control.

> Is the "adversary" claim not undermined by them being a primary trade partner?

It is not. I have difficulty imagining your question is not founded on feigned ignorance.

China is an adversary of the US. Some optimistic and naive Western politicians in the 90s thought making them a "primary trade partner" would cause political changes that would eliminate the rivalry. They were wrong, and weakened their countries in the process. That's been clear for like ten years. Now their mistake needs to be dealt with.

> you should give me your bank account credentials, since we're all the same.

How is this comparable to the media you're consuming?

> How is this comparable to the media you're consuming?

If you can't see the point without tedious hand-holding, I can't help you.

I wonder if once any post goes up that is relevant China's interests, an email goes out from some department in the CCP govt, then hordes of Chinese advocates descend on the comments section, arguing, diverting, obsfucating, and muddying the waters so much that no sensible conclusion can ever be made.

I've been here for years, I just constantly see a lot of talk of harms but no details of what the harms are and it's tiring.

The harms are so obvious I am wondering why I am even discussing it. Obviously giving your primary geo-strategic competitor (with a history of propaganda) access at massive scale to shape opinion, promote discord, polarisation etc etc in the next generation of youth is a bad thing. Not to mention the harvesting of personal data at massive scale and who knows how that might be used in the context of an AI-driven future. You'd have to be ridiculously naive not to see that.

> to shape opinion, promote discord, polarisation etc etc in the next generation of youth is a bad thing

I remain unconvinced that people aren't shaping their own opinions by continuing to pursue similar content to what they typically agree with already. And as we all know, at this current time TikTok's algo is indistinguishable from US competitors in the obvious way it buckets people into like-minded feeds + comments.

At minimum we should be consistent in what we claim is the bad behavior. If the algo is really the problem, start regulating all of them and do it now. To do otherwise is hypocrisy.

> who knows how that might be used in the context of an AI-driven future

I'm not sure we want to legislate and set rules based on a "who knows". If the outcome is bad you need to define that bad outcome.