"What we have today is an entire economic system built on this instrumentarian power. If capitalism is a system built on the production and sale of commodities, our personal data is one of the most sought out. It is mined and refined just like oil, and it has become almost as valuable. The ability to influence behavior at such an enormous scale is coveted by all sorts of third parties, particularly e-commerce businesses and political campaigns. So the US Supreme Court may well have reason to fear that TikTok could grant a powerful few undue influence over the behavior of many American citizens, even if politicians’ claims that TikTok — a private company — is funneling user data to the Chinese government are misguided. If the Chinese wanted the data, they could just buy it. Rather, the Supreme Court has decided that the free speech of American users of TikTok is a small price to pay to protect US tech hegemony, not Americans’ data or privacy.
This is substantiated by the astonishing lack of government oversight of homegrown apps and tech companies. The Supreme Court obviously has few qualms about the undue power to manipulate the behavior of citizens that US policy has granted to corporations, private players who have no concern for the greater interests of their users beyond their ability to target them with ads and political messaging."
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/tiktok-ban-china-data-surveillance
**Dr. Boucher: Trump Is Not the Cause, but a Symptom**
https://www.populismstudies.org/dr-boucher-trump-is-not-the-cause-but-a-symptom/. 
