When the US does it it’s just established practise. When a non-US entity does the same thing, it’s suddenly a matter of national security.
Even as someone with a healthy distrust for the Chinese government, this really is the reason why. If Facebook was Chinese and nothing else changed, the US government would feel the same way.
TikTok is used as a surveillance tool in China but US social media is also used the same way here. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook at the very least donated public profile pictures to the FBI for facial recognition purposes.
The US would react the same for almost any other government with exceptions to the Five Eyes, in which case they wouldn’t care, and Russia, in which case it would be fully banned.
Not to claim that the US government and the Chinese government are the same, though. Only more or less from a spying and surveillance perspective.
Any country, US or not, spying on other countries’ citizens ought to be taken as a matter of national security in the target countries. China does take it as a matter of national security, which is why, among other reasons, many foreign social media sites and services are blocked, run as separate instances from the rest of the world, or restricted heavily
When you see the amount of patriotism people seem to get flooded in from an early age, it’s kinda understandable the blindness a lot of Americans have to how shitty their country has gotten.
On the flip side, China definitely has its own problems, particularly with such an authoritarian government currently.
On the other hand, if all of this public attention leads to restrictions on ALL digital tracking, not just from foreign corporations, I’ll be soo happy.
The only issue I’ve ever had with TikTok is that it’s the Chinese government spying on American citizens in a way they don’t allow America to do to theirs. Not that either instance is right but you can’t say something is wrong and not allowed and do it yourself.
But America spies on non-American citizens in the exact same way as TikTok does. The US complaining here is just hypocrisy. And the US has been doing it for far longer than the Chinese have.
So as a European citizen there is no difference between USian or Chinese Big Tech in terms of spying on me.
When the US does it it’s just established practise. When a non-US entity does the same thing, it’s suddenly a matter of national security.
The anti-Chinese vibe in the US right now is rather absurd. The rise of China should have been viewed as an opportunity, not a threat.
Even as someone with a healthy distrust for the Chinese government, this really is the reason why. If Facebook was Chinese and nothing else changed, the US government would feel the same way.
TikTok is used as a surveillance tool in China but US social media is also used the same way here. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook at the very least donated public profile pictures to the FBI for facial recognition purposes.
The US would react the same for almost any other government with exceptions to the Five Eyes, in which case they wouldn’t care, and Russia, in which case it would be fully banned.
Not to claim that the US government and the Chinese government are the same, though. Only more or less from a spying and surveillance perspective.
Any country, US or not, spying on other countries’ citizens ought to be taken as a matter of national security in the target countries. China does take it as a matter of national security, which is why, among other reasons, many foreign social media sites and services are blocked, run as separate instances from the rest of the world, or restricted heavily
When you see the amount of patriotism people seem to get flooded in from an early age, it’s kinda understandable the blindness a lot of Americans have to how shitty their country has gotten.
On the flip side, China definitely has its own problems, particularly with such an authoritarian government currently.
FTFY (signed: a lemming from Latin America).
On the other hand, if all of this public attention leads to restrictions on ALL digital tracking, not just from foreign corporations, I’ll be soo happy.
Every accusation levelled at china is projection
The only issue I’ve ever had with TikTok is that it’s the Chinese government spying on American citizens in a way they don’t allow America to do to theirs. Not that either instance is right but you can’t say something is wrong and not allowed and do it yourself.
But America spies on non-American citizens in the exact same way as TikTok does. The US complaining here is just hypocrisy. And the US has been doing it for far longer than the Chinese have.
So as a European citizen there is no difference between USian or Chinese Big Tech in terms of spying on me.
China doesn’t let anyone spy on their citizens as they ban all foreign social media etc. That’s the difference.