Note there is a difference between saying one thinks TikTok is a national security threat to the USA, and saying one thinks the U.S. government should ban it (or so on). It's tempting to base your opinion of whether TikTok is a threat on how much you (dis)like authoritarian responses, but that's a logical fallacy.
Imagine, for example, an extremely convincing book is authored that convinces anyone that reads it that the United States government should disolve itself and its citizens should pledge fealty to China.
Quite credibly, the book could be described a national security threat to the US.
However, I would still argue that the book should not be banned, and that any country that wants to honestly describe itself as "free" could not ban the book.
Being a free country means giving citizens the right to engage with ideas that might not be aligned w/ the interests of its government.
I don't think a social network is like a book. It's more like the postal system. TikTok is not saying anything themselves. They are transmitting communications that other people are saying to each other (in the form of short videos).
If users had to address their videos to each other and they were delivered FIFO without priority, I would agree that they would be neutral.
But TikTok (and all social networks) are using algorithms to promote some content and demote others. This algorithm is an extremely powerful voice.
In 2016-2018, everyone was concerned about foreign countries influencing the election by running bots/ads on Facebook. Following the election, there were many policies put into place to try to prevent this bad behavior [1]. Fast forward to 2020 and there is documented proof of a foreign country controlling a social media algorithm and we aren't concerned?
I think the it's a bit different to compare the medium of a book. It's a one directional medium with ideas. In America, we treasure speech and don't fear ideas.
But in a two directional medium, that allows an entity to soak up information .. well that's already a problem in the US. Europe saw it as so much of an issue they implemented GDPR (for better or worse) and California has similar legislation.
Information is way different, and we've already seen cases where TikTok has been caught reading clipboards (could just be to scan for tiktok links, but it could have also been harvesting additional data).
The US does not allow certain things to be imported/exported to other nations. We've seen that for decades with Cuba and various other embargo. If you get a book from an embargoed country, it's not illegal to have to distribute it (granted it doesn't contain illegal/obscene content). The Federal government can legislate foreign commerce.
> Note there is a difference between saying one thinks TikTok is a national security threat to the USA, and saying one thinks the U.S. government should ban it (or so on).
In this case, I'm not convinced there is - the nature of the alleged national security threat is very different from security threats in the past.
From recent actions in Hong Kong, it has been evident that the CCP will arrest and imprison people for criticising the CCP. If the suspicion is that the app gives the CCP access to vast amounts of information (including people's political views via their posts) on individual members of the public, including on the Chinese diaspora (placing relatives at risk in China or they themselves if they visit them) that is a different category of "national security threat". It's not just that it makes political or military strategy harder, or even that it foments domestic dissent (foreign propaganda of the past). The allegation is it directly puts civilians in jeopardy.
If the conclusion is that the app is such a threat (puts civilians in jeopardy to a foreign government), it would be odd to support its presence in app stores, used in playgrounds, etc.
That's really far fetched though. Consider this: the CIA kidnaps and tortures people. They can look at Facebook activity. Therefore, all countries should ban Facebook because it might lead to their citizens being kidnapped and tortured by the CIA. That's equally far fetched and I don't think anybody is seriously arguing for it.
> Consider this: the CIA kidnaps and tortures people
You're clearly a lot more invested in this than I am. I'm not aware of any CIA kidnappings; I am aware of news headlines on HK media executives being arrested and am aware that the Chinese government is heavily invested in monitoring the views its diaspora express in a way that the US government isn't. (If an American called Trump a goose, they'd probably get upvotes. If someone called the Chinese leader something they might have more problems.)
Yes, the quantity is different, the quality I'm not sure about. Are Chinese internment camps worse than Gitmo or Abu Ghraib?
The Chinese have apparently kidnapped people off the street as well, but not in Western states to my knowledge. That's different with the US, though maybe they haven't kidnapped anyone in China or Russia.
