[rydre]

American social media app's dominate my country. Google 99% market share. Facebook/Instagram 95% market share in social. 5eyes/PRISM (they're not gonna forgive snowden, he ruined their reputation) monitors my country (not part of the anglospehere) and I never consented.

Am I supposed to tell my government to block American apps so that I can compete with American apps or on "national security" grounds? Because this is the trend American's will see. And if Zuck is reading this, you're shooting your own foot. What do you think is gonna happen? You're pitting the government against TikTok because your company cannot compete fairly. You think you'll win like this? Your Facebook/Instagram will get banned in future by other democratic countries in future because of the precedent you're going to be setting.

Let China do it's thing. It may very well turn out that their way of governance is better. Losers stick to old ways, if it turns out it's the superior system, they'll clearly be better.

But for a system to be proven takes decades/centuries. As long as China does not force it's system, it's fine in my eyes.

[kumarvvr]

>Am I supposed to tell my government to block American apps so that I can compete with American apps or on "national security" grounds?

The primary motive is to curb propaganda. If all the countries in the world blocked data collection, businesses all over would stop data collection.

>You're pitting the government against TikTok because your company cannot compete fairly

Perhaps. But if the new competing app also collects data, the govt. ought to shut it down. Ultimately, I want data collection to stop.

>It may very well turn out that their way of governance is better

Governance is different from protecting basic human rights. An authoritarian government is a danger to the whole world. You can see that already happening with Turkey.

[FooBarWidget]

How is Turkey a danger to the whole world?

And didn't the Turkish people vote in Erdogan?

[sct202]

It is actually a very interesting example to set that Microsoft is buying English speaking TikTok regions. I wonder how many other unions or countries are considering forcing Facebook, Google, etc to sell their local operations to a local company?