cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12876226
The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.
US officials have cited the widespread commercial availability of US citizens’ data as another source of national security risk. The US government and other domestic law enforcement agencies are also known to have purchased US citizens’ data from commercial data brokers.
This is a misleading headline. It mandates that Tiktok be sold if it’s to continue operating in the US.
Which honestly I support. It’ll probably just be sold. Even if it’s not, the CCP should not have a direct pipeline to feed US citizens whatever they want (even if they’re allegedly “not using it for that”).
All the CCP has to do is buy advertising. If Russia can swing a presidential election with Facebook then so can the CCP. None of this makes any sense unless we actually hold executives accountable for the actions of their companies. No more second chances after admitting to Congress that they flaunted the law almost continuously from the last time Congress caught them.