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9 points

Facebook sold personal data to a foreign organization called Cambridge Analytica who used it to influence our elections. If their motivations are to protect us via protecting themselves, why is Facebook not banned, and not even in the discussion of being banned?

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3 points

For one thing, today isn’t 2015

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4 points

Did occurring in 2015 happen to make it less bad somehow? We sure as hell weren’t passing laws to ban facebook back then either, so I’m not sure what point you think you’ve made.

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1 point

We didn’t have the same stance on data privacy back then as we do today. GDPR wouldn’t be a thing for another year, not implemented for two more after that (2018). Legislators largely didn’t understand the risks associated with unrestricted exchanges of seemingly benign user data at the time. Yay for hindsight being 20/20.

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0 points

Hindsight and foresight are identical I always say

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-1 points

Wrong. They let Cambridge collect it on their platform. Huge difference.

The rest of your post is irrelevant.

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1 point

Their justification for banning Tiktok is that it allows the Chinese government to collect on their platform. It’s the same fucking thing.

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0 points

And we should ban them too. I love this argument. We need better user data privacy laws, and this whataboutism does not change the fact that China is a hostile foreign nation.

I can appreciate that people view Google and Meta and so on as very similar in their transgressions. But as was pointed out in the original comment, this is a cost to benefit ratio type of analysis for the federal government and they gain more by keeping Meta and Google going and can enact other measures to prevent that from hurting them (usually reactionary), so to them this is fine. It is and always has been about what the US government can to do protect itself and enrich itself. Enrichment doesn’t always come in the form of monetary value.

If you’re upset at your own government (or government adjacent tech entities) gathering this type of data from users, you should be for banning them too, not keeping tik tok.

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2 points

I am for severely restricting the ability for all corporations to gather and sell user data. You think I’m making a whattaboutism or whatever debate buzzword you want to conjure up; what I’m taking issue with is the argument that the reason they’re getting banned has anything to do with that data collection or “national security”. If that had any truth to it, Facebook would have gotten the same treatment, or at the very least would be in the conversation now since they do the same exact shit. If this was about data collection they would pass regulations about that instead of targeting one specific site to unilaterally ban.

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0 points

I think you brought this up as a *whatabout" to something I said as a rebuttal rather than an agreement so maybe check your tone. You didn’t say anything in your comment necessarily agreeing with the original comment at any point.

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