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rayinreverse t1_jdaloal wrote

I hate to say it, but remember when Trump said we should ban TikTok?

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KHaskins77 t1_jdb6e4k wrote

Yeah, right after people used it to trick him into thinking his covidpalooza rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma would be bigger than it was.

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RonyTheTiger t1_jdauc25 wrote

He said that to try to leverage China, not to defend the US in any way. Right idea but for all the wrong reasons.

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okay_throwaway_today t1_jdb39v5 wrote

It’s tough to sift through the nationalist/xenophobic propaganda, but I work in cybersecurity and there are some very real concerns with respect to tiktok

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rayinreverse t1_jdaxnv4 wrote

I mean he literally said he wanted to ban it because it was a threat to national security. I’m no trump fan, but I distinctly remember this.

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matts1 t1_jdaz97j wrote

Or he was using that as a smokescreen after users of tiktok made him look bad by conducting a campaign to inflate his rally numbers. For one or two of his rallies before the 2020 election, users would signup for tickets to his rallies in the thousands. When they had set things up expecting thousands and only a fraction showed up. Kinda irked him.

He didn't give a shit about "national security" especially since Facebook collects the same "data."

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rayinreverse t1_jdb03vy wrote

Then the current administration doesn’t either, because no one’s going after Facebook.

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matts1 t1_jdb0nb2 wrote

I agree but that's because Facebook paid for the lobbying to make tiktok look like the boogeyman. Just because they couldn't compete with tiktok.

Whether or not its really a security issue is up for debate so far as I am concerned. Considering the existence of data brokers. That any country can just buy data from which contains the same stuff that come from apps.

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poopoomergency4 t1_jdbr4fc wrote

>Just because they couldn't compete with tiktok.

if they took some of the effort and funding out of this "meetings but in VR" concept, they could probably afford to build a viable competitor, but lobbying is cheaper so why bother?

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matts1 t1_jdea1fs wrote

Oh they tried.. They added features to instagram that they plucked directly from tiktok. People just weren't interested.

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poopoomergency4 t1_jdbr1xs wrote

>He said that to try to leverage China,

same reason it's being brought up now. with a side of lobbying money from domestic companies that want their market share

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