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?

TikTok is packed full of political propaganda. Controlling which narratives people think are popular is super powerful. It’s called manufacturing consent.

So is the Canadian government, especially under Trudeau, which indirectly controls the media organizations through funding.

All mainstream articles about the trucker protests were horrific lies (except for the honking, which was indeed disruptive and stupid).

I don't care about TikTok, since there is nothing of value there. But will Canada also ban globaltimes.cn now?

(The value of the Global Times is to find out what the party in China thinks, not that it is unbiased.)