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.
You get a pass on this because you’re not an American and most Americans don’t know what a Bill of Attainder is. But it’s a law that targets a single person or organization. And the Constitution outright bans it.
SCOTUS has also historically been very unhappy with attempts to weasel word around the Constitution. Their position has consistently been if the effect is to do something that would be unconstitutional then it is unconstitutional.
That said. There’s no reason to target a single company when we can regulate the industry just as easily. Unless the actual intent is to force a private sale for the benefit of American billionaires.
But with your response to an actual bill and over a decade of American data vendors selling everything to China; I can see that you don’t care about regulating the industry. You just want to punish China. Nobody is refuting the horribleness of China. But there isn’t any evidence they’ve even tried to do anything to the international version of TikTok. Or that the Singaporean company that runs TikTok would listen to them
So yeah I’m against giving the US government powers it’s called corrupt in every country that’s used them. Especially in response to xenophobic jingoism. This is being done the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.
Right, because me saying that Facebook and other social media selling our data even just for advertising is not ok and we should introduce laws for strong data and privacy protection equates to me “not caring about regulating the industry”.
Sure there, bud.
Nonsense.
Ok, I get this, but it gets murky when the “organisation” being targeted is a corporate office of a government party.
I’m not claiming to have the answer, but as a non-American I can’t get upset at such a bill. Simply because it would push back against a country that lately had been getting away with everything and causing severe and deliberate harm in other countries, including mine and yours.