I’d be surprised if this data wasn’t already available through American dominated companies like Meta the same way. More and more, I’m starting to think this w

I’d be surprised if this data wasn’t already available through American dominated companies like Meta the same way. More and more, I’m starting to think this was never really about “privacy” itself. Coming from the US government, it even sounds a bit ironic given the laws that are currently in force. Nothing is truly private in today’s world. And if the article is right, a lot of this data is already brokered and sold online, so China can buy it the same way anyone else can. So I assume it’s about something that’s harder to sell to the public. For example, giving China a bigger opening to shape public opinion or influence elections, or other national security angles. I’d consider that a real threat too. And of course ordinary greed helped. For pennies, US tech effectively acquired one of the biggest social platforms on the planet, basically through state pressure. Heh, who would’ve guessed that the old saying "data is the new oil" would be so... literal.