Technology

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

Cambridge analytics

that data goes to the US government instead of to the CCP

Going to blow people's minds when they find out Temu data also goes to the US government and Facebook data also goes to the CCP.

This shit is just a commodity. It's auctioned off at the bid rate. The NSA doesn't just lay claim to this data, it buys it. And these Big Data companies are only handing it over because of the absurd margins NSA (and MI5 and the rest of the Five Eyes) directors are willing to pay.

Your data isn't any safer because the parent company is owned by a foreign plutocrat. This is a big club and you ain't in it.

it’s foreseeabke that they get fined into the dirt if nothing else.

Or they just route the sale of traffic through a domestic data broker and buy "analysis" on the Chinese side of the legal fence. There are so many badly policed and underregulated aspects of the data business that this shit never amounts to more than publicity stunts.

American trade with China only ever increases year-to-year, despite all the noise about a Trade War. Chinese based drop-shipping schemes only ever eat into our domestic market share, because American incomes are falling into line with the global average and that's the kind of trade good international middle class workers can afford. And all this shit is getting blended together - Indian and Chinese businesses outsource to Indochina and Malaysia and Indonesia where labor is cheaper. Everything gets routed and flagged through Singapore anyway, so the real origin of a good is obscured by the time it lands on your doorstep. And nobody in the business of making money wants to pay a politician to do anything about this in practice.

Nobody is getting fined, much less into-the-dirt.

Cool, let's ban Temu then. Nothing of value will be lost.

In all honesty though, I disagree with banning software, and that includes TikTok. I think it's a terrible platform and I refuse to use it, but I think we need to solve the underlying problem another way, otherwise we're just picking and choosing what speech is allowed in this country. The Constitution doesn't only protect American citizens, it protects everyone.

That said, if we're going to ban one, let's ban them all. These apps haven't provided any tangible value IMO and they've arguably caused a fair amount of harm, so I'm not going to die on a hill defending them.

A US Citizen might be protected by Article 1 Section 9, but courts have adopted a three-part test to determine if a law functions as a bill of attainder:

1. The law inflicts punishment.
2. The law targets specific named or identifiable individuals or groups.
3. Those individuals or groups would otherwise have judicial protections.

And unfortunately for the CCP they fail #3 unless the Chinese owners divest and all Chinese centralization for the company gets shut down.

Also, the tiktok ban was passed alongside a bill outlawing sale of data to China, Iran, Russia, etc. So if FB is still selling to China it is also illegal.

Good thing that's not what's happening, then.

And one of the reasons POC are more likely go to jail (or even gets shot) for something a white man would be let free with only a warning… At least in the “free” land.