No, the problem is Chinese-aligned whataboutism, a hallmark of tankie bullshit. People deflect to American spying to justify Tiktok’s spying, as if people aren’t already mad at Meta, Google, Amazon, and the rest spying on them. On the individual level, one is letting anyone “get away” with spying, so saying Tiktok should “also” be able to get away with spying is complete bullshit. We can be mad about all of these companies spying at us at the same time.

Have you seen anyone respond to criticism about Facebook’s tracking policies with “oh but Tiktok also tracks you so you should be okay with this?” Because I sure haven’t, but it comes up all the time when people discuss Tiktok. It’s just so disingenuous… allow people to discuss topics, we’ll get to shitting on Facebook and Google too, don’t worry. Detracting every Tiktok convo to that just makes you appear as if you’re trying to shove their wrongdoing under the rug.

And if you’re talking about foreign policy, western social medias are already blocked in China out of the same national security concerns that’s behind a potential Tiktok ban. It is extremely dangerous to allow foreign, especially hostile powers to influence your society through the algorithms of a social media, because they have a very clear incentive to make your population elect the worst possible people and sow chaos. This is why a lot of non-western-aligned countries block western social medias, and this is why the west should also block non-western social medias. It wouldn’t be unprecedented.