Yeah "policymakers" was intentionally vague, to include people who aren't themselves politicians, but are involved in influencing policy. People like staffers and policy-focused writers and people at think tanks and government agencies.
Your impression that this is just a right-wing politician thing simply isn't accurate. I have been reading arguments - mostly from the center-left - about this problem for years, long before the war in Gaza.
Frankly, you sound like a very young person who just started paying attention to politics, and think that the one thing you've seen happen so far is the only thing that has happened.
I think your idea of what represents "center-left" is miscalibrated. The China hysteria in the US is primarily a right-wing phenomenon, encompassing both the Republicans and much of the Democratic establishment.
It's clear (both from the timeline and from numerous statements by the politicians involved) that the reason this latest attempt to ban TikTok succeeded, where previous attempts had failed, was because TikTok did not suppress anti-Israeli / pro-Palestinian views in the way that Facebook did.
There's no need to get personal about a dispute over something like this. I've been following politics for a few decades in a few different languages. I'm old enough to know that the exponential growth in American hysteria over China is a new phenomenon (though I'm not old enough to compare it to the earlier Red Scare of the 1950s). There definitely would be enough psychopathy over China in American politics to have banned TikTok earlier, were it not for the fact that it's the most popular social network in the US and politicians were afraid of backlash. Gaza - and specifically TikTok's "failure" to suppress pro-Palestinian views - is what pushed the issue over the line, and convinced Congress - which is extremely pro-Israeli, on the whole - to ban TikTok.
> It's clear (both from the timeline and from numerous statements by the politicians involved) that the reason this latest attempt to ban TikTok succeeded, where previous attempts had failed, was because TikTok did not suppress anti-Israeli / pro-Palestinian views in the way that Facebook did.
You keep saying this, while providing zero reason to believe it is true beyond "it is the most recent thing that happened".
It's even more mystifying to me that you are apparently so susceptible to this kind of recency bias, without being young.
Your impression that this is just a right-wing politician thing simply isn't accurate. I have been reading arguments - mostly from the center-left - about this problem for years, long before the war in Gaza.
Frankly, you sound like a very young person who just started paying attention to politics, and think that the one thing you've seen happen so far is the only thing that has happened.