Sen. Marco Rubio: We must stop China from using TikTok against America
So if Chinese officials tell the company to use the app against its users, ByteDance has the power to do it and no choice but to comply.
Does that sound farfetched? Think again. Over the past few years, ByteDance has reportedly spied on American journalists, boosted Democratic candidates in American elections, promoted Osama bin Laden s letter justifying 9/11, skewed political opinion in favor of Hamas, and accessed Americans driver s licenses, physical addresses, device IDs, tax information and Social Security numbers all through its ownership of TikTok.
via nypost.com
I don’t know which knee to jerk on this one. But realistically world, the ban on TikTok would likely be used by our Dear Overlords to increase their already much too evident management of our information access and therefore our reality. Yes, I do worry about CCP officials deciding it was time to activate a bunch of trained TikTok zombies to go crazy, and maybe they will. A better approach would be to crack down on offerings to children. You could require TikTok users to submit their ID’s to sign up, the way you do for medical marijuana in some states. That could be done without dropping us further into the frankly increasingly fascist-looking state we have.