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    Half of Canadians support TikTok ban, with U.S. concerns ‘trickling’ north: poll
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    Half of Canadians support TikTok ban, with U.S. concerns ‘trickling’ north: poll

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    26 Comments

    1. EfficientCarpet578 on

      If I’m a country whose goals are antagonistic to Canada’s and America’s, and I have a subsidiary of a social media company, and I have the algorithm, and I know that, even if I nudge this or that opinion by 0.01%, scaled up over hundreds of millions of interactions a day, I can effectively control people’s opinions.

      I would 100% leverage that power to, for example, nudge opinion towards anti-Israel, or pro-Russia, or pro-China, or anti-natalism, or pro whatever the flavour of the month is.

    2. PabloGaruda83 on

      I support the ban. I think only large North American corporations and oligarchs should be able to mine our data, sell our information, and influence us, both subtly and overtly. They have been proven trustworthy, have never lost our data, and only have our best interests at heart. /s

    3. GreyMatter22 on

      My Reddit feed is horribly political, no matter how much I try to avoid, subs whom I have never subbed keeps coming on my feed, you know, Trump this, PP and Trudeau that, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine/Russia, mass migration, and so forth. 

       Now my Tik Tok feed is wonderful, absolutely nothing political, just investment memes, DIY recipes, DIY projects, cool cleaning techniques, some genius repair ideas, travel hacks. 

       My IG feed is all sports, soccer, NBA, you name it. Here is what is interesting, I never sought this material, for Tik Tok and IG, I probably liked a few items, and the algorithm is just taking me on a journey.

    4. Paranoid_donkey on

      I like TikTok but even I acknowledge that I only like it because it’s addicting. 90% of the stuff I see on there is stuff I’ve already seen before. You certainly don’t get smarter by re-learning the same information endlessly.

    6. ialo00130 on

      I support an Internet Privacy Bill over a Tiktok ban.

      No website/Corporation should have access to our personal browsing data; not Tiktok, Loblaws, Facebook, X, even those shitty blog sites that request a million cookies.

      We need our own version of the EUs GDPR.

      A Tiktok Ban is in essence a ‘Meta Protection Act’. They’re just as bad, but becuase they’re American, it’s appearantly ‘ok’. It shouldn’t be, they should be treated the same.

    8. ColdMedia696 on

      Those short videos fry your brain, that includes TikTok **and** Youtube Shorts.

    11. Talyyr0 on

      Canada’s cultural history is one long tale of US concerns trickling North lol. We are their hat and they wear us like it.

    12. OpenWideBlue on

      As long as they ban the others as well.

      If the issue is China stealing my data, Edward Snowden showed that Canada is doing the exact same thing through the 5-Eyes network. China however has no enforcement power over me within these borders.

      Canada Does.

      Ban them all if we’re banning one.

    13. forgetfulfally on

      I do too. And a Meta ban. And a twitter ban. Or just make it so social media is responsible for what gets posted on it. They profit from it, they should have the consequences of it.

    16. the_meaty_sauce on

      Let’s take it a step further and ban all all social media that shares user info.

    17. 5ManaAndADream on

      Frankly it’s pretty stupid. Instead of taking some nonsense talking points as gospel we should be making stricter legislation regarding *all social media platforms.* TikTok is the same invasive, privacy stealing, propaganda machine trash heap the rest of them are it’s just based in china.

      People will point to china and go “well their goals are antagonistic to Canada” as if the shit elon propagates isn’t. How the covid epidemic played out should be evidence enough for anyone unconvinced. They should all be held legally responsible for the shit that permeates their platforms.

    18. RicketyEdge on

      Don’t necessarily agree with a ban, it’s the sort of simple minded “solution” that our current government is known for, because actually addressing an issue properly is harder then just saying “**fuck it, ban it**”.

      That being said, I won’t miss it.

    19. MiyakeIsseyYKWIM on

      I support the Florida ban tbh. There’s no actual reason a child should have access to social media when right now it seems to be one of the great evils in our society

    20. impatiens-capensis on

      Some interesting results from the survey:

      1. Only 26% of those surveyed have a tiktok account. Whereas 83% have a facebook account.
      2. Support for a tiktok ban was:
      1. 42% for the 18-34 age range and usage rates were 47%
      2. 59% for the 55+ age range and usage rates were 12%

      So most people surveyed do not have a tiktok account and the majority of the support for a ban was concentrated in the population with the lowest usage rates.

    21. Simpletrouble on

      Half? What half? Are they locked away in basements? I haven’t met anybody who supports it

    22. Caspar_Friedrich02 on

      If you’re going to ban Tik Tok, ban Meta, X and so on also… a break from social media would do society as a whole some good

    23. BurstYourBubbles on

      Makes me wonder how many of us are incapable of forming our own opinions and just parrot whatever the Americans are doing

    24. chronocapybara on

      A Tiktok ban is just distraction from a greater issue: corporate and governmental spying on citizens using social media. There’s a crackdown on Tiktok because its parent company is Chinese, but you can bet if it was an American company we would suddenly be “fine” with it. We should advocate for ALL social media to not spy on us, including Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and all Google apps, not just Chinese software.

    26. zanderkerbal on

      A TikTok ban wouldn’t solve anything, just establish a precedent that the government can suppress social media it doesn’t like. And why, because TikTok spying on people and potentially passing that data to the Chinese government is worse than Meta and Alphabet and Twitter spying on people and selling that data to anyone willing to pay, probably including the US government and possibly even including China as well?

      I want strong data privacy regulations that force *all* social media apps to curtail their invasive data collection and algorithmic targeting.