Tik Tok Trap.

[Voltaire2]

The tik Tok ban law is a case study for how the Democratic Party leadership shoots itself directly in the foot with the intention of doing just that.

Fearful of appearing insufficiently xenophobic against China, they steered the party’s congressional caucuses to support the supposedly bipartisan ban on the currently most popular social media platform on the planet.

The maga strategists knew exactly what they were doing, and have now positioned their leader as the savior of Tik Tok.

We aren’t playing 3d chess, we are playing checkers at a gun fight.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. It's not a TikTok ban and it is fair. tRump is pandering to low info voters

It's not a ban. It's a forced sale.

China is ruthlessly engaging in massive online espionage and data collection. TikTok says they are unconnected, but even they (US operators) might not know how compromised they could be.

tRump is the one playing checkers. He now is squeezed between his anti-China rhetoric, maga hate of China, and TikTok partisans (who are numerous).

[womanofthehills]

3. What data could we possibly have that is not out there?

I got a message from a friend’s friend - suddenly she is being suggested as a Facebook friend. My neighbor puts up a wind turbine and suddenly I’m being bombarded with adds to buy one too.

My good friend gets bombarded with adds for stuff I buy on Amazon.

China will not sell TicToc as it makes them mega bucks. Americans love TicToc. Bad decision to want to make a forced sale - probably cost lots of votes.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. There is a huge amount. Much more than you imagine. And many more uses than you imagine

Raw data is one thing. But what really happens is that Big Data (like Google, Facebook, and China) correlates, sifts, connects, and infers from data. A data point correlated with thousands of other data points (out of billions) because much more significant than on its own. Google and American businesses have commercial goals. The Chinese have broader and longer term goals.

They apply large neural networks (AIs) to (in the Chinese case):

* Find expat dissidents so their "police stations" dotted across North America and Europe can pressure them and pressure their families back in China.

* Discover supply chains for critical goods they are forbidden to obtain directly.

* Figure out what honey pot and vice-baited tactics will be effective for suborning and corrupting targets, be they highly placed people or people in sensitive jobs in national security.

* Figure out where secretive work is being done and thus where to target espionage. An innocent social media post or private in-app message from an advanced materials scientist that says "I'm moving to Pahrump, Nevada but I can't tell you what I'm doing there!" gets correlated with other key people asking about finding a doctor there or exclaiming about how nice their new desert condo is.

* Running bot campaigns to influence elections, policies, and to attack institutions and people.

I'm only scratching the surface. The professionals know hundreds of techniques.

[Think. Again.]

2. If I understood correctly it's a National Security issue....

...and I believe Democrats are correct to put National Security ahead of party.