tech companies care even less? how do you arrive to that conclusion? tech companies log/store EVERYTHING. this would be an absolute boon for them to be able unequivocally assign to you all of the data they track about you. suddenly, anonymous analytics become identified data and not just deanonymized data.

Logs of location data on people are already worth real money. The FBI has admitted to buying it. The companies that do age verification will absolutely be selling that data unless there are severe penalties for doing so, and what are the odds that the U.S. government passes a law making it illegal for the FBI to buy data?

That's bad enough if you're a U.S. citizen. If you're a non-U.S. citizen, now you're in the situation where all these U.S. social media sites are collecting personal information from you and reselling it, but you have no legal protection unless your government risks tariffs and invasion threats to pass legislation against it, which the U.S. will probably ignore anyways.

This might just be the impetus that finally drives enough users to non-U.S. social media platforms to get the snowball rolling downhill.

> This might just be the impetus that finally drives enough users to non-U.S. social media platforms to get the snowball rolling downhill.

I guess, but like, who? During the time TikTok was not available on an app store (even though the service wasn't stopped), people were trying some of the other Chinese apps, and they were not very compelling as the exodus never happened.

It's a chicken and egg problem. Without users, a new social platform lacks content, so it can't attract users. Unless something decidedly new and compelling comes along, users will probably stick with what they know... unless something happens that really pisses them off.

If I'm being honest though, I don't think privacy concerns will be what does it. The TikTok generation doesn't give a fig about privacy. You can build a panopticon around them and they won't even notice.