>will not be using information it gathers on US or European citizens in order to defend or promote democratic rights and freedoms globally.
And when was America doing this? I seem to recall the last 15 years as being full of America attacking and occupying foreign nations to claim resources.
I really don't think it had much to do with whether they had access to Facebook...
This seems to be getting caught up in general "pro-US"/"anti-US" or "pro-China"/"anti-China" sentiments on the forum. To be honest, I'm not interested in that or getting into general political discussions, though the question of how the tech environment will evolve around the world is very interesting to most of us that read this forum. Someone claimed it was "surprising" that Americans would support their companies operating overseas but oppose alleged data gathering by allegedly foreign-government-linked corporations. I expressed that I'm not surprised by that at all. That matches up pretty well with how I imagine the American public reacting.
Likewise I do think the nature of this allegation is different to national security allegations in the past. So far as I recall, this is the first time a national security risk allegation has been about mass data collection on civilians from the regular operation of an app. Cambridge Analytica is perhaps the closest equivalent, and that got shut down pretty quickly even though it was a company run in another western country.
And when was America doing this? I seem to recall the last 15 years as being full of America attacking and occupying foreign nations to claim resources.