@h2onolan I'm pretty sure it's ownership. See also how Kaspy got banned while CrowdStrike not.

@cR0w ha! our brains are touching.

thanks for putting that post in front of me and sign me up for that particular pedants club.

@cR0w i have subscribed to my own account’s rss for this reason.

@h2onolan The argument I usually hear is the potential for algorithmic content manipulation in the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan.

So, the scenario would be that China starts making moves against Taiwan and starts artificially promoting content designed to make a strong US response unpopular.

@nerdpr0f that makes sense. its stupid and cynical but it tracks.

"ban tiktok because we cant control their messaging"

@h2onolan Two thoughts:

1) This isn't the official line. The official line is about data security and privacy of US users. It does make me wonder about the number of people in positions of authority who are doing things they shouldn't on TikTok under an account not associated with their real identity.

2) It's going to be ineffective. Removing TikTok from app stores isn't going to do much. I wrote a piece for The Conversation about this a year and a half ago, when this first started getting serious.