The House on Wednesday passed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner to either sell the hugely popular video app or be banned in the United States.
Republican leaders fast-tracked the bill through the House with limited debate, and it passed on a lopsided vote of 352-65, reflecting widespread backing for legislation that would take direct aim at China in an election year.
It would arguably take less effort to write a more general ban on apps and companies sharing, selling, and aggregating data on users than one specifically carving out foreign-owned companies.
Not doing that makes it clear this isn’t a “first step.” This is a blanket approval of the practice, but with “election year, China bad” thrown in.
Yes, any government access to user data can, and will, be mis-used, including Tik Tok. Opposing this bill isn’t an approval of Bytedance, it’s an opposition to the process.
I agree. That’s ALWAYS been what feels to me to be the correct path forward. But that’s not what’s happening, is it? So we would have to get our politicians to a place to make something like that happen.
I too can oppose the processes and have an additional thought. Why do people insist on making everything so black and white?
I totally agree with the start of this thread. I simply a stated it’s not the worse thing in the world for our government to start looking at where our data is going. Would I love to have the correct, best solution put into place? Sure. Does that ever happen in politics? Rarely? So fuck me for having a discussion huh.