"Users (and our government) should instead insist that, to operate in the USA, that ByteDance respect the software rights and freedoms of their users by releasing both the server and App components of the software under a “free and open source” (FOSS) license.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2025/jan/18/usa-should-require-bytedance-to-open-source-tiktok/
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@conservancy @karen The way how they've gone over the deactivation is clearly to start out with giving Trump an early populist win.
But your appeal to reason is lovely, it's just headed towards a sunsetting oligarchy ...
@conservancy
Replace "ByteDance" from the quotation above with "all social media companies" and you have my support.
This whole thing strikes me as a ridiculous case of "Their surveillance BAD! Our surveillance GOOD!"
@karen
@conservancy @karen That won't happen and it doesn't stop Meta, X, Alphabet, Apple, or Amazon who are doing the same things legally. Data going to China is readily available on the market from the aforementioned companies. And we already know that Russia, Israel, and others have used these platforms for propaganda. Shutting down TikTok earns politicians Twitter-points with Magats while also squelching speech not approved of by corporate oligarchs
This is theatre and a distraction
People would of course correctly understand; "Release all relevant software in source form under a free software license (note that free means freedom, not gratis)", but of course not.
Even having cr...app and server source code wouldn't help, as the biggest issue is how it's SaaSS; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html