Inside the US government’s battle to ban TikTok

Should Tik­Tok be banned?

“What about-ism” is usu­al­ly a bad argu­ment tac­tic, the fol­low­ing are what about-isms.

1. Why all the has­sle to ban Tik­Tok when Face­book and Google both spy on peo­ple scot free?

2. Why was Volk­swa­gen’s diesel gate con­tro­ver­sial to the point some VW execs got jail time, and yet the peo­ple behind the Boe­ing 737 MAX that killed two entire flights with hun­dreds of peo­ple made it scot free?

3. Why was Sam­sung Galaxy Note banned for explod­ing when phones like the iPhone weren’t strangers for explod­ing and catch­ing fire yet did­n’t have any restric­tions imposed on them?

4. Why was Russ­ian med­dling in the US a big deal when the US has done the same thing to mul­ti­ple coun­tries all across the world, ini­ti­at­ing coups and desta­bi­liz­ing gov­ern­ments with­out any punishment?

None of these what-aboutisms jus­ti­fy the acts I men­tioned. Galaxy Note 7s should be recalled, VW execs need to be held account­able, Rus­sia should­n’t med­dle with anoth­er coun­try’s pol­i­tics, and if Tik­Tok is steal­ing data then they need to be exposed for it. These are state­ments I agree with.

What about-ism here isn’t meant to jus­ti­fy these things, but it’s meant to high­lights the USA’s true inten­tions. If they real­ly cared about pri­va­cy, they’d look into ban­ning BOTH for­eign and local tech com­pa­nies. If they real­ly cared about vehi­cle reg­u­la­tions & safe­ty, they’d hold Boe­ing execs account­able and throw them in jail the same way they dealt with Volk­swa­gen. If they’d real­ly care about safe­ty with elec­tron­ics, they would make a lot of noise about when iPhones catch fire and blow up, not just when Sam­sung does it. And yet they don’t do any of this. They take action with for­eign com­pa­nies that break the rules but nev­er their own busi­ness­es. It was nev­er about the greater good, it’s about sti­fling com­pe­ti­tion under the guise of being the hero.

My how lies have fed this agen­da. If they’re on plat­forms from oth­er coun­tries, then the world and Amer­i­cans, too, are not under the thumb of the CIA. There’s already a spy in Amer­i­ca’s pock­ets. CBS — “Social Media is a Tool of the CIA, Seri­ous­ly.” In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s invest­ment arm, has been buy­ing up data min­ing firms. You don’t have to ask if they’re doing it, but how good at it are they? Futur­ism — “How the CIA is Using Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Col­lect Social Media Data.” The Guardian — ” Google’s Earth: how the tech giant is help­ing the state spy on us.” We don’t ask ques­tions about their abil­i­ties and activ­i­ties. Hin­du Post “Google hir­ing ex-CIA per­son­nel in key posi­tions, finds new inves­tiga­tive report.” This is an argu­ment that they want the CIA to do that for the world, not that it’s happening.

So, the politi­cians who are ok with this bill just care about the enemies(tiktok) and not about the traitors(facebook, ama­zon, google)

Just ban it already instead of all this dra­ma.
A lot of tik tok cre­ators use Youtube shorts and Insta­gram reels… so their free­dom of speech and busi­ness­es won’t be that hurt.

What an incred­i­bly dis­hon­est view of the bill. Did­n’t expect less from the verge!

hate Tik­Tok anyway

Ppl sup­port­ing tik­tok are the same ones who will sup­port Chi­na in a war against the US.

Google does the same thing!

Learn from India, we banned this app in secs. Nation’s safe­ty first💯

For the first time in my his­to­ry with Verge, I got­ta say ter­ri­ble video and I got­ta guess pur­pose­ly steered towards keep­ing Tik­Tok image clear.