Salon published a commentary today under the truly stupid headline "Attempted TikTok heist by Congress just proves our data is safer with China than the NSA." Aside from proving that Salon is garbage, what is the point of this? Apparently it's meant to sound the alarm about the damage the new bill could do to Joe Biden's chance at reelection.

Good ol’ Joe is one trigger-happy SWAT-cop away from having another Kent State on his hands but, thank God, he can at least find the time for a little cybersecurity theater to entertain Republican voters, and still have enough left to put a nice bow on whatever future tech-company sweetheart deal will be funded by this wannabe corporate takeover.

Good to know he’s out there protecting us innocent Americans from having our data collected by the government of a country that has absolutely no jurisdiction over us, so that our own God-fearing National Security Administration can safely collect that data for itself instead. Isn’t that nice of him? After all, it would be a shame if we were allowed the choice of giving our data to a country that can’t use it to arrest or persecute us, instead of being forced to feed it to the gaping maw of the most massive domestic spying operation the world has ever known, in a country whose prison population is greater than China’s. *Insert screeching eagle here.* FREEDOM!...

If ByteDance sells, Biden looks like a GOP corporate shill and the NSA ends up with a God-tier algorithm; if ByteDance refuses to sell and TikTok is banned, no one under 45 is voting for him. It’s like punching the high school pretty boy — win or lose, people still aren’t going to sit with you at lunch.

Joe Biden certainly isn't my cup of tea but even I can see that he isn't currently directing the activity of police on various college campuses. So even if, God forbid, we had a student shot on campus, I'm not sure how that would be Joe Biden's fault. The author suggests that Biden could put an end to this risk but I'm not sure how. He could certainly call for an end to it but independently run campuses could still make their own decisions about when it's time for campus or city police to get involved.

The second paragraph opens with the idea that Americans shouldn't worry about having their data handed over to the CCP and closes with the odd suggestion that American ideals of freedom are a joke when in fact we incarcerate more people than China. This is so confused and backwards that it seems like an effort to intentionally miss the point.

China has one of the most repressive and censorious governments in the world. You can start with the fact that TikTok and many other social media sites in the west are illegal in China. And the equivalent apps which are legal in China are heavily monitored by the government. Any topic deemed out of line is deleted and challenges to the government, even non-violent ones, can result in a visit from the police.

The gimmick here is that the author is suggesting China's ability to crack down on free speech is limited outside China so there's no risk to Americans. That would be lovely if it were true but in fact we don't know it is true. In fact, one of the main drivers of the TikTok bill was concern that China could use its influence over the app to censor topics it doesn't want people talking about or to promote topics it does favor. There is some evidence that China may have already done so on TikTok. TikTok denied it of course but then it removed the tool that researchers used to make the comparisons which seems strange for a company that is supposedly all about transparency.

As for the TikTok bill killing Biden's chances in the election, it's true that Byte Dance has already refused to sell the company, saying they would rather shut it down. But it's also true they have committed to fighting the bill in court. That guarantees no action on a sale or a ban will happen prior to the election. So the scenario envisioned here in which TikTok users refuse to vote for Biden over losing the app, won't happen. It's the capstone of nonsense on a pretty embarrassing screed overall.

Meanwhile, a professor at Columbia has written a much more sensible argument in favor of the TikTok bill.

Some have argued that TikTok should be left alone to preserve a free and open internet. They argue that to treat China differently would fragment the network. That gets things backward. China, Russia, Iran and other nations have long since broken from any “one internet” vision with their blocking, shutdowns and censorship. This month, American policymakers demonstrated that doing so has consequences.

That China is in violation of established norms is not in question. In 2022, more than 60 nations signed a “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” enumerating basic online principles that all nations should respect (China, Russia and other nations declined to sign): no shutdowns around elections, no surveillance of political opponents, no bans on lawful content. While no country is perfect, only nations like Russia, Iran and Cuba can rival China in their flagrant violations of these principles. Freedom House, which measures internet freedoms, rates Iceland at 94 out of 100, Russia at 21 and China at 9. That alone is grounds to disqualify it from controlling what is now one the world’s most important social media networks...

TikTok is already banned in a handful of other countries, including India, and on government phones in Australia, Canada and most of Europe. But looking forward, it is important that other democratic nations — particularly the Europeans — take seriously the dangers of Chinese control over their vital communications platforms. While justifiably concerned about the privacy practices of American tech platforms, they can’t ignore the question of who owns TikTok. The democracies of the world have played the sucker for far too long.

Here's a bit of Freedom House's report on internet freedom in China in 2022:

The Great Firewall is the world’s most sophisticated internet censorship apparatus. Content that contains criticism of individuals, policies, or events that are considered integral to the one-party system is blocked. The breadth of censorship is constantly growing, leaving Chinese users with access to a highly controlled, monitored, and manipulated version of the internet.

According to GreatFire.org—an anticensorship group that tracks filtering in China—as of May 2023, at least 175 of the 1,000 most heavily visited websites and social media platforms in the world were blocked in China.31 A localized version of Duolingo became accessible in June 2022, after the app was blocked in August 2021.32 Many international news outlets and their Chinese-language websites are blocked, such as those of the New York Times, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. The websites of independent Chinese-language news services from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora—such as the Liberty Times in Taiwan, Initium in Singapore, and the China Digital Times in the United States—remained blocked during the coverage period.

A wide range of other websites that might provide information critical of the Chinese government are also blocked, including those of human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Freedom House.

Most international social media and messaging platforms are blocked, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Signal, Clubhouse, YouTube, Telegram, Snapchat, Line, and Pinterest.33 The popular discussion forum Reddit was blocked in August 2018,34 while all languages of Wikipedia were blocked in April 2019.35 A number of Google services—including Maps, Translate, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Scholar, and Analytics—remained blocked as of the end of the coverage period.

China has zero respect for freedoms on the internet. Letting them potentially control an app used by 170 million Americans is lunacy. I'll close this with one comment which sums up the risk.

 I am truly surprised at the naivety in the comments about China.  One only has to look at what the Chinese government says it is trying to do to know why TikTok is a national security threat.  Xi has stated that his goal is to reshape the world in China's own image with Chinese Communism as the dominant ideology.  He and other PRC leaders have stated repeatedly that they will do this by controlling the physical and digital infrastructure (like ports and telecom) that we depend on for the flow of goods and ideas,  as well as the inputs and means of production for defense, industry and economy (like critical minerals and rare earths).  China's leaders currently use their digital control at home to monitor, propagandize, suppress, and violate the rights of their own citizens. 

TikTok provides a platform for a hostile foreign government to conduct the largest foreign intelligence and influence operation against American citizens in history, and China absolutely should be forced to divest.  And no one is being censored if China is forced to sell, people can still say whatever they want on that App or any other platform.

If they won't sell, shut it down.