Readers respond to last week’s Feedback Friday topic, which was:
TikTok or TikNot?
Posted March 3, 2023
Some U.S. legislators are, once again, beating the political drums of war against TikTok, the popular-but-controversial social media video platform owned by China’s ByteDance—an internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
The Washington Post recently reported:
“Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said…that banning TikTok from the United States over security concerns “should be looked at,” and that members of the Senate Commerce Committee “are looking into that right now.”
“Schumer is one of the highest-ranking U.S. officials to date to float such a ban, which would far exceed restrictions Congress placed last year on federal employees using the app on government devices. While lawmakers have introduced bipartisan legislation to outlaw the app entirely, the measures have not advanced out of committee.
“The broadside comes as TikTok and the Biden administration continue negotiations over a potential oversight framework to assuage U.S. officials’ national security fears about the company, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
“TikTok has previously pushed back on calls for greater restrictions against the app and said it has made a “comprehensive” proposal to the Biden administration to settle security concerns, including heightened privacy guardrails.”
Those security concerns focus on claims of the app covertly mining data of its users for espionage purposes. In another piece focusing on the growing controversy of banning TikTok, the Washington Post wrote:
“Some tech experts argue that the sudden explosion of the bans, coupled with doubts over TikTok’s actual harm, is more a reflection of government groupthink—and an overreaction to an app they don’t entirely understand.
“‘This is the U.S. adopting a Chinese attitude toward the internet: We’re going to block things we don’t want you to see because everything’s a national security threat,’ said Milton Mueller, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor and co-founder of the Internet Governance Project. ‘It’s really a dangerous attitude—not just for American values of free expression but for this whole idea of an open and interconnected internet.’”
Do you use TikTok? Do you think it should be banned from the U.S. altogether? Or do you think it’s a form of political censorship and suppression of American values?
Here’s what you said:
I do not use social media, and would not use a platform that is based in China, we cannot trust the Chinese Government , historically they have infultrated our companies to build air craft and other things using our Technology against us. The company that owns it should move the site to a neutral country, which might help.
Norman Hines, Kensington
Vote to ban
J Bing, Annapolis
The Chinese government presumes an oversight role and monitors the activities and data collections of many of its largest corporations. As a matter of course, it collects terabytes of private data each year about its own citizens and citizens beyond China's borders. China as a matter of national policy neither respects nor values the concept of privacy. Information that Americans would consider to be personal and private can be made available to the Chinese government.
We do not know how or when these data might be used later by the Chinese government to harm, embarass or threaten American citizens. For these reasons the TIkTok application should be totally banned across the United States.
Robert Davis, Odenton
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