Yeah, I mean to people paying attention for even 5 seconds that was just a lie.

Even if we fully accept the spyware narrative, no one has made an argument for what Chinese state intelligence can do with all this information on browsing habits and interests of Americans. Are they monetizing it? I guess, kinda. (TikTok does anyway). For targeted ads. The same thing Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. do. That's not any concern for these people. They claim it's a national security threat not an "influencing American commerce" threat.

So where's the threat? It's not like they're stealing financial information. Not the fucking Chinese state. Maybe individual actors in and around China/South East Asia. That's also still not a national security threat. The implication with that terminology is they're stealing US citizens' information and somehow using it to harm the US government. Like blackmailing military members, perhaps. Or gaining access via social engineering to what they have access to including classified (actually) sensitive information. But zero proof was ever shown or even hinted at in that regard, so, I have to say "That ain't happening." If they caught the Chinese state with their hand in that cookie jar we'd never fucking hear the end of it.

I mean I can go on and on but the point I always arrive back at is "Democrats didn't really give a shit about TikTok until exactly in the months after October 2023 when the ADL was recorded (he's such a dipshit) whining to whoever it was that they had a TikTok problem." One can only assume the ADL tried to strong arm TikTok secretly at first, got properly told what they could go do to themselves, and immediately ran to Mommy and Daddy US government to force them to censor "anti-Israel" content (aka just actual footage without Jake Tapper justifying it). It's what I would do in their place. But, you know, for moral reasons, not in support of genocides. Thus why I'm not in their position...

Allowing Americans to be influenced to see the realities of what their government and allies do to other people... now that might actually represent a national security threat in the long term. Can't let people know the truth and actually demand changes! And changes regarding what Israel does?!? HOLY SHIT!

It makes perfect sense, plus they've all but admitted it was because of TikTok lack of censorship of what Israel was really doing. They're not even really denying it. Romney was up on stage joking about the shit like immediately after