The Imagined TikTok-ing Time Bomb

The “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” won’t protect us from China

I hate it when the former president and I are on the same page on a major issue. In this case, it’s the overwhelming urge in congress to ban TikTok, a short video app used by 170 million Americans.

Enacting a ban –which will be tied up in the courts for many months to come– would be an overstep into First Amendment territory, and it’s based on woulda-coulda speculation unsupported by facts.

China is the boogeyman in the speculation, which includes scenarios where the private data of millions of Americans is hoovered up and attempts could be made to clandestinely influence public opinion. 

The fact of this bill being presented is already a victory for the Chinese, who can point to the ban anytime the US criticizes that nation’s domestic policies. And that Asian superpower already has a more effective system in place to wage digital war. 

A ban can be looked at as a childish quid pro quo, the logic being that, because China bans Facebook and other US based apps, we’re going to strike a blow for freedom by banning one of theirs.

The House of Representatives passed a bill (352-65) early on Wednesday giving TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest its US assets of a short-video app or face a ban. While the legislation’s fate in the Senate is unclear, there is bipartisan support for its passage.

Donald Trump’s reasoning is far different than mine. In his case it’s about a major donor who happens to own 15% of the stock in the parent company. And, politically speaking, the very idea of banning Tik Tok is unpopular with the younger voters both parties need.

The app’s fate has become a major issue in Washington. Lawmakers from both parties have told the press that their offices had received large volumes of calls from teenaged TikTok users who oppose the legislation, with the volume of complaints at times exceeding the number of calls seeking a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

San Diego Congresswoman Sara Jacobs voted against banning Tik Tok.

• “As a member of both the House Armed Services and House Foreign Affairs Committees, I am keenly aware of the threat that PRC information operations can pose, especially as they relate to our elections. However, after reviewing the intelligence, I do not believe that this bill is the answer to those threats. Banning TikTok won’t protect Americans from targeted misinformation or misuse of their personal data, which American data brokers routinely sell and share. This is a blunt instrument for serious concerns, and if enacted, would mark a huge expansion of government power to ban apps in the future. Instead, we need comprehensive data privacy legislation, alongside thoughtful guardrails for social media platforms – whether those platforms are funded by companies in the PRC, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the United States. 

• “Taking this unprecedented step also undermines our reputation around the world. We can’t credibly hold other countries to one set of democratic values while giving ourselves a free pass to restrict freedom of speech. The United States has rightly criticized others for censorship and banning specific social media platforms in the past. Doing so ourselves now would tarnish our credibility when it matters most and trample on the civil liberties of 150 million Americans – a vast majority of whom are young Americans – who use TikTok for their livelihoods, news, communication, and entertainment. Ultimately, all Americans should have the freedom to decide for themselves how and where to express themselves and what information they want to consume.”

The New York Times explained what banning the app would mean in practice:

• If the bill passes the Senate and is signed into law by the president, it would impose civil penalties on app stores, like those operated by Apple and Google, if they distributed or updated TikTok.

• The app is already on millions of phones in the United States, but the restriction on updates is likely to degrade users’ ability to access it.

• This would be supplemented by a measure that prohibits web hosting companies from helping to distribute the app.

There is already a ban of sorts in place in 19 states where the governors have banned the app from state-owned networks and phones. And it hasn't worked, with Reuters noting that TikTok’s growth in the social media market came in at 33% last year. 

You wanna know where a ban of TikTok has (sort of) worked? That would be mainland China.

The parent company was founded by private Chinese citizens. Sixty percent of its stock is owned by major institutional investors, twenty percent is owned by company employees (including 7000 Americans), and the remaining stock is owned by its founder, Zhang Yiming. 

Three out of five members of its board of directors are US citizens. Since October 2022, a data collected by the company has been stored on US servers owned by Oracle in Texas; older data is being moved to these servers. .Moderation on TikTok is overseen by a  US and Ireland-led Trust and Safety team, and the company has no operations in China.

No company is immune from interference or data theft by a determined foreign entity. The Saudi Arabian government, whose agents successfully infiltrated Twitter and stole information related to Saudi dissidents in 2014-2015 is a famous example. The Russians and Iranians have flooded Facebook with propaganda entities faster than the social media giant can kick them out. 

The issues with social media and media in general that has disrupted society are digital illiteracy enabling rejection of content with ill will and cultish rejection of social norms fostered by entities that believe they are above the law.

Kaiser Kuo, a leading expert on U.S.-China relations, has an extensive rebuttal to the “moral panic” kind of rhetoric currently in play at his Sinica newsletter and podcast:

• Proponents of the TikTok bill say that they’re worried about Chinese influence operations — that TikTok will be a powerful conduit for propaganda. Leaving aside, for now, my right as an American to see even the most rank propaganda if I really want to, one has to ask: Is this alleged Chinese influence actually working? If it were, would you not expect to see opinions of China in the U.S. improving? They clearly are not: They’ve worsened dramatically across the years, and never more precipitously than in the years when we’ve worried most about the supposed threat. 

• So let’s be honest at least about why we’re doing this: It’s an emotional reaction to do something in the face of this supposed threat from China. But it’s a move that will weaken, not strengthen us. 

(And, yes, the idea for my lede today was appropriated from his newsletter)

There is an addictive quality to visual media for some folks based on a desire to seek out invoked emotions, ranging from laughter to anger, with a heavy dose of sexual urges along the way.

Some say this constitutes a mental illness. I say it’s only a sickness if there is nothing else in people’s lives to fill an emotional void. This emptiness, shaped by a lack of hope and human contact, won’t be solved by banning stuff. 

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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An Anniversary - Four years on, what did we learn from Covid? By Jill Filipovic

• Somehow it’s been four years since the Covid pandemic was declared a national emergency in the US. Since then, more than a million Americans have died; many millions more have died across the globe. Many more got sick; some still have not fully recovered. March 2020 feels both like yesterday and like a million years ago. To me, it feels like at least two years are just… lost. A black hole.

• One thing Americans have not done is grapple with what happened: Why our Covid death toll was so high; why the downstream impacts (learning loss, many kids still not back in school, violence, instability, mental health declines) have been so far-reaching; what we got right and what we got wrong; where we put the collective fear and anxiety and grief that shaped so many of our lives; why so few of us are capable of admitting that maybe we made some missteps.

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The Deep Weird: Consequences of the Rabbit Hole by Jared Yates Sexton at Dispatches From a Collapsing State

• There are many political strategies for defeating authoritarianism. What I continue to espouse is that we must address the material conditions that brought us to this point in order to break the fever and move forward. History shows us this is necessary. But, at this stage, it is also important that we do not lend the GOP any measure of normalcy. This means no hoping Republicans will have “an epiphany” and wake up. No longer calling them “friends” and pointing out when they’ve “worked across the aisle.” Or continuing to claim a “strong Republican Party is needed.”

• Instead, this weirdness needs highlighted. Appealing to voters about “tax credits” and “means testing” doesn’t do the job. It only highlights a species of technocrat that is similarly off-putting, but in a different way. Neoliberals are bloodless, cold. Republicans and authoritarians excel at feverish passion. These two things counterbalance one another in a way we’ll need to discuss further. The answer, though, is to relentlessly highlight how strange all this is. Appeal to Americans who are genuinely put off by this nonsense. There’s already been proof in special elections and Midterms that voters don’t want to vote for these people and would rather be left alone by it.

• Britt’s performance was disastrous and might very well hobble her career. It was probably the best she could have done, judging by her past ads and speeches. But it’s a valuable artifact. A glimpse into a world we should never glimpse. Pure, unadulterated horror.

• A room with no exit.

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Portion of US adults identifying as LGBTQ has more than doubled in last 12 years Via USA Today

• The portion of U.S. adults identifying as LGBTQ+ has climbed in recent years as millennials and members of Generation Z age into adulthood.

• More than one in five Gen Z adults (ages 18 to 26) identifies as LGBTQ+, as do nearly 1 in 10 millennials (ages 27 to 42). The percentage falls to less than 5% of Generation X, 2% of Baby Boomers and 1% of the Silent Generation.

• "As younger generations are growing up with more LGBTQ representation and arguably more acceptance of LGBTQ people, it makes sense that they are also more comfortable to openly claim their LGBTQ identity," Robinson said.