I’m aware many impacted users are proposing to go use telegram instead — a huge national security footgun for the US intelligence community — not to mention the collective cyber impact of millions of naive kids side-loading trojan TikTok binaries and having their bank accounts raided. But…
…but what I am really interested in is how this is going to be enforced, if at all?
- Are the outgoing democrats proposing to build a cyberwall and make the Chinese pay for it?
- Are they going to try to coerce VPN providers into banning TikTok egress?
- Are they going to lean on the app stores to forcibly remove the app?
- Are they going to try jailing TikTok executives who fail to prevent US kids from accessing the site?
A few weeks ago I was reading “a history of the world in six glasses” where it was explained that a ban on coffee houses in London was so widely ignored that the King had to gently walk it back so as not to lose face and impact his own authority.
It strikes me that — to mix metaphors — we, too, could be facing a footloose moment where the younger generation DGAF about international online cyber geopolitics and Kevin Bacon just showed them how to install a VPN.
And if the government starts rounding up teenagers for trying to communicate with each other, it’s going to look bad.
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