China doesn’t officially block any American social media. If you ask your Chinese ISP they say it’s just technical problems. There is probably a list somewhere that is considered a state secret, like the list of banned words and banned books. You do not want to cross China’s broad state secrets law by even pretending to know.
Anyways, China should feel proud that this is the first social media app from China that the Americans thought was worth banning. And in China you know that if something is worth banning it must be good right?
We shouldn't get into a dick measuring contest over who hides more from their citizens.
That the Chinese have used our brain worm factories against us, infiltrated our domestic surveillance and wiretapping systems, and let themselves into our completely volitional infrastructure backdoors should only stimulate us to ask why we created such things in the first place.
Oh, I agree, the USA shouldn’t ban TikTok like China shouldn’t have banned…almost all of the non-Chinese social media services. Neither is going to lead to a better market, tech landscape, and I don’t believe national security is a valid concern in any case.
But I really meant what I said about china probably having pride in TikTok now, being banned by your competitor country really is an achievement.
Nobody has even brought up Europe approach to requiring data on shoring and stricter privacy controls, which is the real way to deal with either issue.
I don't think data on-shoring and better privacy controls solves the problem of a widely-used platform controlled by a company beholden to a totalitarian government that has likely been drooling over their ability to influence the political thought of their adversaries' citizens.
