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Notes -
China has long banned foreign social media companies from operating in its borders, and in 2021 passed severe restrictions on companies taking data on Chinese citizens outside its jurisdiction. If TikTok were willing to keep its US data in a US subsidiary that operated entirely domestically by employees under US jurisdiction, we'd be having a different conversation, I think. IIRC Facebook et al already have to keep EU data within the EU too under GDPR.
America has long advertised itself to the world on the basis of being fundamentally, philosophically not-China.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” doesn’t work here because precisely by imitating the controls that China puts on what its citizens can access, America is saying that it does not believe its citizens can be trusted to make right choices for themselves and their country.
Put another way, “nobody’s making them download Chinese propaganda/spyware” might be groan worthy naïveté but considering that to be naïveté rather than nobility strikes at the heart of what I would consider the American project.
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Does this argument work for other forms of tyranny that exist in Europe and China already?
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