OK so WTF is the deal with Tik Tok? Watched the livestream of the CEO being slut shamed by congress. Are the treasure trove of MILF, cat, outdoor survivalist cooking and brick laying short videos that 20-somethings doom-scroll over really a threat to national security? Really?
Discuss.
Really varies, complicated issue. The basic premise is that "TikTok" is a subsidiary of ByteDance, a Chinese company, and according to Chinese laws the CCP is entitled to see and/or seize any information that a company operating within it is storing, which is obviously a massive security risk for the US, especially because so many soldiers use TikTok. I personally swore off TikTok a while ago because it practically gives you ADD - not kidding. Anyway, Congress wants to shut down TikTok on US soil, not because its ruining the youths brains (They like that) but because it may pose a legitimate risk to national security, since the Chinese government can seize any info they want, which includes specialized facial information that's built in for "Filters" (It actually stores and saves the layout and composition of your face), but not only that, they can analyze the metadata, like the posts time, location and the specifications of the camera used to film and post the video, and with the help of their algorithmic black magic they can quite literally change the tides of US elections, they've got millions of US citizens, including soldiers, hooked up to, when looked at as an info-gathering service, quite literally the most effective and wide reaching information gathering network to exist in the entirety of human history. China is doing this with other apps too, a popular Chinese corporation called Tencent has stocks in all of the most popular chatting companies.
People who argue against the ban usually use one of two arguments, the first one is that "TikTok US is stores all of their information in the US so China can't get their hands on it", but the fact is, China can still access all of that info whilst in China. They have thousands of plants in TikTok USA, and the company is still subject to the info laws from China. The second is that congress is using it to sneak in restrictive internet rules, like banning VPNs, but really there's just a clause in there that makes it illegal to use a VPN to access and use TikTok, so both of their arguments are null. Pretty much the core of it all comes down to a good percentage of the population being brain-slaved to TikTok.
When talking about the doom scrolling, it's 100% a national security risk. A day or two of scrolling TikTok can radicalize someone on the right leaning or left leaning side, to the absolute extremes of their views, I've seen it happen, the algorithms detect which political side you're on and start recommending you more and more extreme opinions on that side of the political spectrum. Not only that, but theres also a gigantic risk for predation on TikTok, there's been multiple scandals with pedophiles getting a large audience on TikTok then using it to manipulate children into giving them favours, but it also shoves videos of underage girls doing provocative dances directly down your throat. That was the entire purpose of it in the start, it used to be called musical.ly before it was bought and turned into TikTok, the entire point was just doing dances on camera. It also fries your brain, a good percentage of the youth have a lower form of "ADD" (Attention Deficit Disorder) because of how badly it fries your attention span. I could barely even read a book without getting bored and going to use TikTok back when I used it heavily, it's doing the same thing as tons of drugs do, releasing a little bit of dopamine, making you scroll a few times, then giving you the dopamine again. It's almost like a less expensive form of gambling, in essence. And it's getting worse. their algorithms are so advanced it can calculate exactly what you like and promote 100 videos in a row of that exact thing, I've seen people get actual withdrawal symptoms from ceasing using TikTok. It should 100% be banned, not just for national security, but also for the security of sanity