America’s youth ‘may be about to have more free time on their hands, “said Washington Post. One of their favorite pastime-browse through makeup studies, sweet animal clips and viral challenges on the Tiktok-Can soon deny them.
Last week, the US representative of the US voted to force the app’s social media, replacement dance, to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners or face a ban in the United States. Politicians claim that the app, which has more than 150 million users in the United States, is a national security risk, as it collects large amounts of personal data that the company can use and because it can be used to disseminate Chinese propaganda. If the action passes the Senate – still a large one – President Biden has promised to sign it in law.
Talk about skewed priorities, Julia Angwin said I New York Times. Surveys show that nearly three -quarters of Americans want tighter rules for how technology companies use Personal dataBut only 31% favor a TikTok ban. Forcing to sell TikTok to any other technology company, such as Google or META, will not make us user’s data safer. This action is an act of Election year To close that offends both free speech principles and the correct process, said Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason. We should be very careful about “expanding presidential power to limit Americans’ access to tools to obtain and disseminate information”.
Subscribe to The week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from several perspectives.
Subscribe and save
Register for this week’s free newsletter
From our Morning News Briefing to a weekly newsletter every week, get the best of the week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our Morning News Briefing to a weekly newsletter every week, get the best of the week delivered directly to your inbox.
This is an attack on censorship, not freedom of speech, Jonathan Chait said in New York Magazine. There is “lots of direct evidence that Tiktok’s algorithm” follows the political poems of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2019, leaked documents showed that the app “instructs its moderators to censor videos mentioning Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence or the forbidden religious group Falun Gong”. Tiktok claimed that it changed these instructions, but suspicions remain. We cannot prove it because Tiktok hides its algorithm. The app’s sale to a neutral third party would solve the problem.
It’s time for action, Peggy Noonan said in Wall Street Journal: US security agencies have warned since 2020 that TikTok is “a espionage tool”. With last week’s vote, the house finally showed a little backbone. “Its members said: You can’t hurt America without at least trying to withstand. They signaled to China that it can’t be banking forever about US stupidity and carelessness.”
