• queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    The US doesn’t ban selling data, though. China can buy whatever it wants just as easily as harvesting it from ByteDance.

    And I’d hardly call running an entire social media enterprise “free”. If it’s a torjan horse, it’s an entirely unnecessary one.

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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      6 months ago

      Internet coverage of that topic is surprisingly limited for what seems to be an easily-thought-of national security risk…

      ByteDance’s capitalist entrepreneurs run the enterprise for them, and they can extort data out, yes, for free.

        • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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          6 months ago

          Again, China does not run the company, they just own the leash on the private entrepreneurs who do. That’s one of Deng’s benefits for implementing capitalism. (mildlyinteresting: the word capitalism isn’t capitalized)

            • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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              6 months ago

              It’s a one-time fee that also earns money back compared to the continuous payments to buy from other sources.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                6 months ago

                Assuming China doesn’t have to spend literally any other money, even though countries are constantly investing in infrastructure and security and material to assist the business.

                But also, literally not free. My point stands.

                • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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                  6 months ago

                  You won’t just stop the maintenance if TikTok didn’t exist. It’s not like all China cares about is data.

                  Your question was “why would China get data from TikTok when they can just buy it from Meta”. If China didn’t get the data from ByteDance, ByteDance still incurs the maintenance fee. So no, that is not the expense of getting the data.