The ban on video-sharing social media platform TikTok does not threaten civil liberties but actually stops it from accessing the information of one-third of the American population, according to the New York Post.
The New York Post is a daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City.
According to the publication, there is ample evidence that shows that China used TikTok as spyware and manipulation against Americans. The links between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and TikTok are direct as there are over 300 employees at the video-sharing social media platform that previously worked for Chinese state media.
Twenty-three of ByteDance's directors previously worked for CCP propaganda outlets, and at least 15 ByteDance employees work for them now.
Fundamentally, China is the world's most sophisticated techno-authoritarian state, and President Xi Jinping's regime believes data and the control of information bestow power.
Chinese law explicitly requires businesses to operate and build their cybersecurity networks in a way that gives the CCP unfettered access to their data. So Beijing has access to TikTok's US user data by default; it doesn't even need to ask for it, reported New York Post.
And TikTok aggressively harvests a wide range of user data: names, contacts, networks, GPS locations, even keystrokes, outside-the-app monitoring like Internet browsing and encrypted data.
China used TikTok to push divisive content during the 2022 midterm elections, promoting videos that attacked specific US politicians and hit hot-button social issues without disclosing those videos were coming from Chinese state-controlled accounts.
TikTok pushes pro-CCP content to US users, which means that within the nation there are things for China people are growing and putting them against their own nation.
Employees of TikTok's Top Buzz news app in the US were instructed to place specific pieces of pro-China messaging in the app and to "pin" it to the top.
Earlier, the platform also suppressed information. The Washington Post found only 20 videos available with the hashtag Tiananmen Square on TikTok, most of which say that the massacre never happened.
TikTok is a dystopian reality-distorter that serves the interests of Xi's CCP, according to New York Post.
Make no mistake, the platform doesn't exist so we can be entertained by cat videos. Its purpose is to capture and move audiences.
Then there are the pernicious effects on America's youth.
The app is essentially psychological warfare against America's kids, with its aggressive algorithms sending them down rabbit holes of sex- and drug-related content.
It's been linked to mental illness, anxiety, depression, attention disorders, and even physical tics, especially in teen girls. We are in a reverse opium war.
Rand Paul's solution is to say if you don't like TikTok, do not use it, reported New York Post.
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