Everyone collects our data… Apple, Google, third party apps… everyone. So what is the really concern with China doing it specifically? Everything I have tried to read about this just talks about how China will use it for ads, but that’s what tons of other tech companies are already doing… so why is China owning our data different?
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While the answer that a lot of people give here are absolutely correct, it’s not a TikTok specific situation at all.
The US has very poor regulation on consumer protection in general and especially so when it comes to internet protections. For internet that’s absolutely dominated by US companies, the real dangers are usually ignored by the dinosaurs that make up the US political system. There is simply no urgency to do anything if “you” seem to control everything.
That means that the US specifically (with some state exceptions) have very lax laws when it comes to this sort of thing. It only gets attention now because TikTok happens to be a Chinese company that suddenly gets the very same capacity that US companies already have.
Remember the whole NSA scandal? It was never a problem that the NSA spies on the entire world. It’s only considered a problem once it came out they actually targeted US citizens. This whole TikTok situation is not fundamentally different.
It’s ‘fine’ that US companies are able to manipulate (and have proven to manipulate) their citizens and the citizens of the world because of the smokescreen of control for the US government. Now that a foreign power gets the same power, they suddenly realise what an enormous problem this potentially is.
And because there pretty much is no proper regulation about this sort of thing (like GDPR in the EU), there is no actual leverage to ban apps like TikTok from the App or Playstore. They would easily win lawsuits against the US government if they were forced to remove TikTok from their services. (which is why Apple/Google won’t remove them).
It’s incredibly telling that this crusade is aimed specifically against TikTok instead of lawmakers doing their job and regulating the entire market, not just TikTok. If these laws existed, TikTok could easily be forced to comply or barred from the market.
(And there can easily be provisions in the law to continue allowing this hoarding of data for AI purposes if you properly implemented them. The value of data collection is clear)
One difference between the US and the EU in this regard is that TikTok can be fairly confident a US investigation doesn’t legally find any problems with their approach. A similar investigation done by the EU however can have serious repercussions because unlike the US, the EU actually has proper laws in place for this stuff. (whether enforcement is efficient is an entirely different manner)
So in short, it really has nothing to do with TikTok itself. It’s just that the consequence and power of these companies (including Google/Facebook/Apple/MS) suddenly becomes apparent now that a company controlled by a rival gets the same power. And because the reflex of US lawmakers is not to make things better overall but only act against outside influence, a crusade on TikTok is suddenly on the agenda.
(A fun thought experience perhaps. Imagine a world in which Apple, MS, Google and Amazon were European companies dominating the US market. Do you really believe the approach by US lawmakers would be exactly the same as they are now? Perhaps the US would have better enforced anti-trust laws and GDPR in that case and the EU would be much more lax. You have to look no further than the actions taken by the US government against a company like ASML to find your answer)
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