I’m not sure how closing their domestic office while not banning or ordering significant changes accomplishes anything.
It really just hurts Canadian tech workers who will take contractor roles with the TikTok US office. I’ve met a few TikTok employees and they’re actually very high caliber workers, so it would be a shame to lose them (though I disagree with the ownership of TikTok and refuse to use it).
If anything we should take a page out of China’s book and require an office where we hold the leadership directly accountable for those security concerns, which frankly 99% of people don’t understand or care about.
The Canadian government doesn’t have the power to push around big businesses, they can’t even control our pint sized telecom duopoly. Literally the only thing they do have power over is the physical offices(es).
Banning TikTok all together would also be opening up a fucking massive can of worms. The app can be removed from the Apple/Google repos easily enough but blocking access to the TikTok servers would mean making definite and loud decisions about internet access in Canada.
Would access to TikTok be blocked at the ISP level or would they try to compel TikTok to block connections from Canada? Would bypassing the block come with a penalty, would the use of a VPN constitute bypassing the block? If so will all use of VPNs outside of Canada be under scrutiny, how will VPN use be detected compared to other encrypted communications? Having to give firm answers to any of these questions would create a lot of embarrassing headaches for the government, ISPs and law enforcement.
I’m in agreement with you that I don’t want the government to be fiddling with the pipes of the internet like that.
They could restrict Canadian ad buying, merchandise purchases via credit card, and restrict app store use, and that would do something.
I just feel like this gesture is symbolic at best. We haven’t done anything about the security concerns.
We should be building a domestic tech industry so we don’t see all the value extracted elsewhere.
I just feel like this gesture is symbolic at best.
Governments tend to take incremental measures when trying to get compliance from foreign actors. If you start with the “nuclear option”, you don’t have anywhere to escalate to if that doesn’t get the desired result, or if it causes some other unexpected negative results.
If we’re to fight disinformation, we don’t need to get anywhere close to banning it altogether. Killing app access from the app stores is going to cut off almost all access to it. The point wouldn’t be to go after everyone who’s smart enough to sideload an app or use VPN to circumvent a block. It’s to remove it from the daily media diet of most Canadians.
