US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours.

I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

It's suspicious in this single instance to suddenly care about reciprocity, having never really had a concern in the decades prior.

These people would audibly gasp if you suggested in their presence that tariffs should be equal to what China taxes US firms. Why this? Why now?

I’m not comfortable with this.

I understand that TikTok may represent a national security concern but it’s also a platform that younger generations use for protected speech. What’s the message that we’re sending to this group?

I think the message is: "The government only wants your personal data harvested by American companies so they can monitor that data"

China bans sites & apps from the West that violate their laws - the ad tracking, monitoring, censorship & influencer/fake news we have here... the funding schemes and market monopolizing that companies like Facebook do in the West is just not legal there. Can you blame them for not wanting it?

Companies that don't violate Chinese laws and approach China with realistic deals are allowed to operate there - you can play WoW in China because unlike Facebook it's not involved in censorship, severe privacy violations etc. and Blizzard actually worked with China (NetEase) to bring their product to market there instead of crying and trying to stoke WW3 in the news like our social media companies are doing. Just because Facebook and Google can do whatever they want unchecked in America and its vassal the EU, doesn't mean other countries have to allow it.

The West just wants to counter-block Chinese apps like TikTok in retaliation for them upholding their own rule of law.