Ni hao, American censorship refugees!

As the US Supreme Court weighs a TikTok ban, American users are sticking it to Uncle Sam by digitally migrating en masse to China and out of reach of their own government.

The judgment is expected any day now, and it could mean that the popular online app will no longer be available for new downloads in the US. In the absence of workarounds, it also means that Washington succeeds in censoring an online platform over which it has no control. And that’s clearly the issue, as lawmakers have long been pressuring the Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell off its American operations to a US entity, effectively handing over control of user data to the US in order to avoid the ban – which the company has so far refused to do.

Are we seriously supposed to believe that data held by an American company is in safer hands, as lawmakers want us to believe? There’s an easy litmus test to answer that. Would you be more willing to hand over all of your personal information to your own government, which has full jurisdiction over every aspect of your life – or, alternatively, to a government on the other side of the planet?

In any case, American TikTokers have already made up their minds. The app is now rife with videos of them packing their bags for their “digital migration” to a different Chinese platform – RedNote (known in China as Xiaohongshu). These self-described “TikTok refugees” have been in the process of saying their goodbyes with tributes to their “personal Chinese spies” in TikTok videos, including some made with artificial intelligence, showing them doing things like scrolling on their phone and wandering around making videos for TikTok while a Chinese “spy” dressed in a military-style uniform laughs and cries along with them. Or sits at the table with them on a restaurant patio while they film their food. Or smiles while they’re hanging out with buddies at the bar and taking group selfies. Or sits on a lounge chair on a beach while their “American target” films their beachside vacation antics.

Apparently Chinese RedNote users........

© RT.com