Friday, March 15, 2024

TikTok is so bad, only Steve Mnuchin can save it (Day 54)

I don't care about TikTok anymore than I care about Facebook or Twitter, but I do care that TikTok is being singled out for doing exactly what every other platform does. Cory Doctorow explains why the platform is as garbage as the others; worth a read

I would applaud the US Congress for trying to control TikTok if they were also trying to do it with other platforms. This is not the case. Well, of course it isn't. 

The big winners, based on what happened in India (I'd link to this, but it's from an Economist Newsletter), are going to be YouTube--sorry, Google--sorry, Alphabet and Instagram--sorry, Facebook--sorry Meta. Those services ended up eating the local services that were developed after India banned them. (India and China get into a hell of a lot more than China and the US, in case anyone was wondering.)

Fine, here we are, China should divest, yada yada...but how should we be sanguine when Steve Mnuchin, aka Trump's Treasury Secretary, is now said to be trying to buy TikTok? Are all the people who were concerned about the Chinese government getting a hold of user data and weaponizing it, that somehow wouldn't be a concern if it's Mnuchin's crowd? Uh. Huh. 

Good thing I wasn't going to use TikTok anyway.

Deb in the City

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