I think he does a good job at explaining both sides and calling for a root-cause solution, but he’s definitely leaving out an important piece: the data collected by all the US social media companies can’t just be taken by the US government. They need reasonable causes and go through channels where their access should be checked before they can get their hands on the data. The Chinese government, on the other hand, can just compel TikTok to hand over the data they want.

I don’t like the data overreach by all big us tech companies, but at least their data has some safety rails around its usage.

I understand the “but I like TikTok” crowd, but China bans US companies from operating in China all the time. Why is it all of a sudden a problem when we do it to them?

Seconded, it’s amazing for occasional reddit use when you don’t want your eyeballs seared by the normal interface!

Some people, especially in staff+ engineer levels, just want to work on their little piece of an ultra complex data center problem and are happy doing it. From my experience, they don’t seem to care what the broader company is up to, they’re just immersed in their n-of-1 problem space and happy that they get to solve it.

Not saying it’s the right thing to do, but not everyone actively cares about their company. It’s a paycheck and fulfilling technical problem solving to them.