Remember how, towards the end of Trump's first term, there was decent bi-partisan support for the banning of TikTok because, you know, it's a Chinese spy app?
Then, remember how everyone stopped talking about it once Biden got into the White House?
You may have assumed it was because Biden's so friendly with China and doesn't really care if they spy on Americans (see: Chinese spy balloon), but as it turns out, Biden cooled the jets on a TikTok ban, likely, for another reason entirely.
He wanted to get in on that sweet spy action.
The Biden admin tried to reach an agreement with ByteDance, the company that pretends to own TikTok (the actual owner is the Chinese Communist Party), to allow the Biden admin authoritarian control over the app in the United States.
The draft agreement, as it was being negotiated at the time, would give government agencies like the DOJ or the DOD the authority to:
• Examine TikTok's U.S. facilities, records, equipment and servers with minimal or no notice,
- • Block changes to the app's U.S. terms of service, moderation policies and privacy policy,
- • Veto the hiring of any executive involved in leading TikTok's U.S. Data Security org,
- • Order TikTok and ByteDance to pay for and subject themselves to various audits, assessments and other reports on the security of TikTok's U.S. functions, and,
- • In some circumstances, require ByteDance to temporarily stop TikTok from functioning in the United States.
Yeah, this looks like just a basic oversight of TikTok. However, given what we know about the app's data gathering and spying on users, this would allow the US government access to that same data.
From Breitbart:
While there is bipartisan concern about the influence of Chinese-controlled TikTok on American citizens, past proposals to rein in the platform have been characterized by many observers as little more than a Patriot Act style power-grab, giving the federal government unprecedented authority over a social media platform and its users.
Considering how the US government has abused its power over Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and Twitter (pre-Elon) to influence the social media platforms, it's no shock they would want to exercise similar powers over TikTok.
The Biden admin really said, "Why ban TikTok when you can just use it to control Americans?" And as long as they think they can use it for their advantage at some point, they aren't going to even think of banning it.
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