News today that Donald Trump (President of USA) expects to sign an Executive Order which will have the effect of banning the social media platform TikTok from the USA on the grounds that information about US citizens will be gathered by the People’s Republic of China via the platform.

You may be outraged at the actions of Mr Trump or the PRoC or you may be disgusted with TikTok.

Too few people will actually pause and realise that Mr Trump has effectivey acknowledged that social media platforms collect people’s data - and that it is OK as long as the platform is not controlled by PRoC and by extension anyone outside the USA’s direct sphere of influence.

Now, who have you shared your daily routine, buying habits and holiday plans with? Google? Twitter? Facebook? Amazon? It seems they’re all good. TikTok? Evil-evil-evil.

If what you actually wanted to do was share stuff with your friends, colleagues or customers how about agreeing to use Mastodon, Gab, Twister, Diaspora, Friendica, GNU social or Pleroma? No data gathering. No adverts. All good.

Further news on this subject suggests that the word ‘banned’ may be an exaggeration: ‘…it’s not clear how Mr Trump would enforce such an order. A less draconian approach would be to ban TikTok from being installed onto federal employees’ work phones.’. Umm… I may have missed the point of TikTok - or perhaps misunderstood the term ‘work phone’. Why on Earth would you allow TikTok on any work machine?