US lawmakers are once again attempting to ban TikTok. The latest effort is being tied to aid to Ukraine to ensure this happens.
There has been a long running effort to ban TikTok in the US. States such as Montana passed a bill banning the platform. The efforts were aided by mainstream media who spent months spreading moral panic about the platform, but that moral panic turned out to be not all that effective in the end. On top of it all, there have been efforts to push the TikTok moral panic into Canada as well.
So, why is mainstream media and some US lawmakers trying so hard to ban the platform that has allowed creators to build a business and contribute back to the local economy? As Mike Masnick of Techdirt earlier noted, the efforts appear to be, in part, perpetrated by those with financial interests to get the platform banned in the US.
More famous is the moral panic that some of these special interests have been pushing. Specifically, there is a conspiracy theory that says that China is manipulating TikTok for their own political agenda and brainwashing people through short form video’s to act in China’s own interests. This obviously doesn’t make any sense, but the goal isn’t necessarily to convince people who use the app to join in on the efforts to ban it, but rather, convince those who don’t use the platform in the first place that TikTok is part of this monolithic threat to US peace and prosperity. As a result, some have become convinced that this is a thing.
Another part of the conspiracy theory is that China has unfettered access to everyone’s personal information through TikTok and can use that to push their own political agenda. What information does TikTok actually have? Well, nothing out of the ordinary for your average platform. It’s why privacy advocates say that if the problem is privacy concerns, then maybe advocate for broad federal level privacy reform instead because such an effort would be infinitely more effective of addressing such concerns. Mysteriously, though, such an idea is somehow off the table.
One of the things I have long looked for is any evidence of TikTok behaving in wrongdoing in all of this. For the number of people in the media convinced that this is all a thing, there is a shocking lack of evidence to support it. In fact, when US intelligence agencies were asked directly for evidence that this is going on, those agencies came back empty handed and, instead, simply said that, “in theory”, this is possible, but that’s all they could say.
Of course, it has become increasingly clear that the value of actual hard evidence for policy makers has dwindled greatly and is ultimately replaced by legislating by gut feeling and whatever the bribery money lobbying dictates. So, it is probably not a huge surprise to see that the evidence free effort to ban TikTok is now back. From TechDirt:
Apparently, the TikTok ban bill is back.
Speaker Mike Johnson plans to include TikTok divestiture legislation already passed by the House in a fast-moving aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the chamber is set to clear on Saturday. The Senate is expected to quickly take up the measure, and President Joe Biden promised Wednesday to sign it immediately.
If signed into law, the bill would deliver a significant blow to a video-sharing app used by as many as 170 million Americans. Its enactment would also mark a major setback to the company’s intense lobbying efforts, especially by Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew, who made the rounds on Capitol Hill last month in a bid to get the Senate to squelch the legislation.
I’ve already explained why the TikTok ban is both unconstitutional and would not do anything to fix the “concerns” that people have raised about it. We’ve also discussed how those most vocally pushing for the TikTok ban appear to be financially conflicted.
But, even more important than all that, is that a TikTok ban would be a disaster for the open web. Yes, other countries have banned apps, but they tend to be authoritarian countries that have never liked and never supported an open web.
Banning an entire app in the US would be a massive attack on the very concept of an open web. And that’s really unfortunate, given that the US used to be the world’s most vocal supporter of the web being kept open and free.
One thing that has long been clear is that the benefits of banning TikTok are virtually non-existent while the pitfalls are wide ranging. The US banning TikTok would only embolden various regimes around the world to start banning apps and platforms as well. After all, if the US can ban TikTok for “security” reasons, then why can’t any other country do the same for any app or platform thy choose? The US, in this case, wouldn’t really have a strong response to refute that.
What you are left with is a fractured open web where what is allowed to be accessed is whatever the government deems to be OK. As Masnick points out, this is basically a huge attack on the open web. Yes, people can simply opt to use VPN and other anonymous technology to circumvent these censorial measures, but nothing is stopping the government from going after such services as well. If they can ban TikTok, then why not also ban a VPN service used to get around government censorship? Even worse is that it puts all the productivity and economic activity that was sparked by the open internet at risk, rolling back innovation and entrepreneurship by decades in the process. After all, once one platform can be banned, any other platform or web service ultimately becomes fair game.
It’s an impending disaster for both free speech, innovation, and economics that only threatens to get worse from there. What’s worse is that it is being perpetrated by a country whose government considers their own country as “the land of the free” on top of it all. All this because of an evidence free conspiracy theory. Are we really so willing to throw away a democracy promoting tool over something so comparatively trivial?
