I hope so as that would be the rational position to take. However copyright law is often anything but rational from what I have been able to see, so it wouldn't surprise me if they just rule the entire thing is in violation of copyright.

Bruh I'd they'd voted no on forcing a deal to keep the economy functioning it would be the easiest political win ever for the Democrats, not the Republicans. The Democrats would've been able to point to how they all voted for it and the Republicans just wouldn't come to the table.

The only reason to separate them is because the Democrats actually didn't want it to pass. Moderate Democrats follow this playbook time and time again and people like you keep eating it up.

Pretty sure California already has laws covering this issue anyway, it's primarily the "states rights" red states that depend upon the federal government for enforcing regulations that prevent a descent into an ancap dystopia.

The US doesn't have much in the way of rules to begin with when it comes to data usage. That's the problem. Outside of wiretapping laws, COPPA, HIPPA and Financial data laws they effectively don't exist. Not at the federal level. There is no law requiring that TikTok not provide data access to employees located in China. They promised to cease doing so, because Trump threatened to use his broad executive powers to ban it under the claim that they were a unique national security threat. Huawei absolutely was, albeit primarily on the infrastructure side. And China definitely has a history of patent and general intellectual property theft.

Overall, I don't disagree that the CCP is a threat to western civilization. I don't even disagree that TikTok should be regulated and even banned if they repeatedly break the rules. However currently there aren't any real rules that apply to them.

If we are gonna ban them, it has to be for breaking rules that actually exist, with the consequences clearly written out in those rules/laws. Calling to ban them outright now however is completely legally and ethically unjustifiable. They haven't broken the law because there are no laws on what they are doing. They aren't collecting anything unique.

The reason why I can't help but see this as being racially motivated is because American companies have been guilty of the same things, and rather than calling for widespread reform they leave the call at banning TikTok. Like banning TikTok will solve all of our problems. Outside of Google and Apple, almost no private sector American company has much of an emphasis on security, and Apple holds the lone title for large American corporations that actually care about protecting privacy even somewhat meaningfully.

Rushing to ban TikTok before there are even any rules to attempt to constrain them, and assuming that because they are Chinese they will inherently violate data regulations immediately and fully is racist. Full stop. Regulate them like any other company from any other country. If they violate those rules then go ahead and ban them if that's the penalty written down in the laws. Whether they are a company from Panama or China should be completely irrelevant under the law. Anything less is in fact racism. By definition. We don't need to discriminate to kneecap the influence of the CCP. Doing so infact means we are acknowledging their ideology is superior. Don't do it. Don't push for us to become like them in the name of containing them. Don't repeat the mistakes of the cold war.

It seems you didn't read your own sources or understand just how widespread all of these practices are. Biometric collection is done via media / camera access. Which is protected by the permissions system and containerization. Contacts again are a permission system protected thing. They do not have access to fingerprint data. That is encrypted and stored in the Secure Enclave. Only the operating system has access to that. They could make their own via a high resolution image of your fingers, but again TikTok doesn't have access if you do not grant them permission to access the camera/media/files. Clipboard access is a concern, but one that applies to all apps and is why Google and Apple have been working on locking clipboard access behind a new permission. However Most password managers use the password manager API on Android/iOS, not the clipboard, with some exceptions.

Full Hard drive scans are nonsense. There is no such thing as a "full Hard drive scan" on modern Android/iOS. On iOS apps do not have access to the full Hard drive, only a containerized file that is only available to that specific app. All requests to access other files must be made via an API, with tight restrictions on what is accessed. Only the operating system has full access at any given time on iOS. On Android it's a bit more complicated and possible to bypass simply because Google is significantly more lax in permitting apps to bypass androids newer security features by letting apps target versions of Android that are ancient and don't support the newer more secure APIs. Eventually Google will force all apps to target a version of Android with the Scoped Storage API, and when that happens this loophole will be closed, and a permission will be required for full drive access.

As for the rest of it, that's all industry standard. UUID collection, targeted advertising based on your activity in app and content uploaded to the app. Using third party tracking systems for more data to further enhance targeted advertising and algorithmic content suggestions... It's all standard and legal outside of the European Union where the GDPR has made most of this difficult, if not outright impossible to do legally.

Technical Illiteracy+ Racism have to play a role, otherwise we'd be seeing similar backlash against Facebook still. Instead all of the focus on Facebook has died out and everyone is talking about Banning TikTok, rather than admitting that we need something like the GDPR in America. A level playing ground that would still neuter the problems TikTok has, however nobody is suggesting that as an option here. Which is telling of the real motivations at hand.

Did you because the only claim is literally impossible.

The articles sole claim, made by a senator on Faux News is that and I quote

>"It’s not just the content you upload to TikTok but all the data on your phone, other apps, all your personal information, even facial imagery, even where your eyes are looking on your phone,”

All your personal information, facial imagery, etc would require TikTok break the permissions systems for iOS and Android. Getting access to data from other apps, not just what apps are installed would require breaking not only that permissions system but breaking the operating system's containerization. Those are some serious, zero day exploits TikTok would need to be using. That is not something that they or any app, no matter how large, could do and not get banned off of the Google Play and Apple App stores. We are talking exploits that if sold to places like Zerodium would be worth millions of dollars. The kind that would be kept under lock and key by intelligence agencies.

The claim is so utterly ridiculous as to not even be worth consideration. Nobody would burn precious zero day exploits for mass surveillance, especially not of the general population of another country. There is no benefit.

If the government is so concerned about that possibility, they should ban any apps not developed by the government itself from being installed on any device used by a government employee. Not trying to ban a popular social media app from the country writ large.

Racism or Stupidity are the only explanations for believing such utterly blatant conspiracy theories, and stupidity is only an explanation if they also think Facebook does this.

You should be. The article appears to be using the FCC's data, which is notoriously misleading, and according to a footnote, they (the FCC) are including any ISP which uses fiber at some point in the connection. So fiber means not just Fiber to the Premises(FTTP) but also Fiber to The Node (FTTN), Fiber to the Street(FTTS), Fiber to the Distribution Point (FTTDP), etc etc.

The fiber connection could be two to three city blocks away, not being offered to you at all, and still count under that measure.

The real number is completely unknown at the moment, as the FCC has basically operated under an honor system when it comes to coverage information for the last 20 years or so, and only began the process of changing that about a year or two ago.

Tbh it's kinda dumb that hydro isn't more popular. It's the only renewable that can provide both base load and on-demand power. In areas where it's possible it should be a no brainer.

It might have it's own ecological issues, but that's true of literally every form of power production.