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But if we assume that employees at FANG don't want bad things to happen to the US and verifiably bad things are happening to the US on those platforms, then the

But if we assume that employees at FANG don't want bad things to happen to the US and verifiably bad things are happening to the US on those platforms, then the null hypothesis is that a Tiktok that also doesn't want bad things to happen to the US will also have an equally large number of bad things happening to the US regardless. To disprove the null hypothesis, you would have to demonstrate that Tiktok has a statistically significant increase in the amount of badness it's causing to the US per unit of attention which is difficult to do when the baseline amount of badness is already so high. Maybe we should focus more on decreasing that baseline so we can actually figure out if foreign companies are doing bad things to the US out of malice or indifference?

ericmay 6y ago
With respect to China and Chinese social media companies I'd rather be much more careful. There's a reason they don't let US social media companies operate in China.
- shalmanese 6y ago
  Yeah, but many of the reasons why China doesn't want US social media companies in China are also the same reasons why the US shouldn't want those same companies in America, namely that they're unregulated loose cannons who are fine with causing social division and strife if it only increases their bottom line. Why would Tiktok need to maliciously harm the US when just their simple act of seeking profit is already doing enough work to harm the US without the need for any malintent? It's like wondering if the open sewer dumping into your town's water supply might also have gluten in it when you're gluten free.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Well then why should the US have yet another social media app coming into the country and causing harm?
    - shalmanese 6y ago
      Because the badness is roughly per unit of attention so if Tiktok is taking people's time away from Twitter/Facebook/IG etc. it's not clear that the sum total of badness is increasing.

ericmay 6y ago

With respect to China and Chinese social media companies I'd rather be much more careful. There's a reason they don't let US social media companies operate in China.

shalmanese 6y ago
Yeah, but many of the reasons why China doesn't want US social media companies in China are also the same reasons why the US shouldn't want those same companies in America, namely that they're unregulated loose cannons who are fine with causing social division and strife if it only increases their bottom line. Why would Tiktok need to maliciously harm the US when just their simple act of seeking profit is already doing enough work to harm the US without the need for any malintent? It's like wondering if the open sewer dumping into your town's water supply might also have gluten in it when you're gluten free.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Well then why should the US have yet another social media app coming into the country and causing harm?
  - shalmanese 6y ago
    Because the badness is roughly per unit of attention so if Tiktok is taking people's time away from Twitter/Facebook/IG etc. it's not clear that the sum total of badness is increasing.