TikTok is saying that they are going to be dropping operations. The media is already pushing for the government to censor RedNote.
Late last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that the TikTok ban is perfectly legal. The ruling is a disaster on multiple fronts. For one, it set the legal precedent that mass government internet censorship is a totally acceptable practice so long as the government screams the magic word “national security”. What’s more, it also affirms into law that freedom of expression in the US is merely a suggestion and not a guaranteed right. If a platform is hosting speech the government doesn’t like, the government can snap its fingers and make it disappear from the fingertips of all American’s living in the country. Additionally, tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs were wiped out overnight in the US economy.
On Friday, I wrote an article (which published Saturday) pointing out that the conditions are now ripe for the US government to repeat the same mistakes it made with Napster. That is, initiate a game of whack-a-mole where for every platform the government takes down, multiple others crop up, ready to take their place. When I wrote that, an article was published on the TikTok ban offering the single most optimistic point of view I’ve read so far post decision:
Under the circumstances, then, this decision may have been the least damaging one the Court could come up with, at least in the available time. But the hope that it wasn’t damaging at all seems naïve. The best we can hope for is that this decision somehow turns out to be the government’s one free bite at the apple, because if it happens again, where the government adopts this roadmap to act unconstitutionally against speech interests, even this Court might start to notice the constitutional problem with such laws and finally decide to do something about them.
While this is certainly a possibility, I personally find this to also be extremely unlikely. The reason for this has to do with the recent precedent set by age verification laws. Indeed, in earlier years, supporters of age verification laws swore up and down that these laws were only meant to be directed at pornographic websites. Putting in age verification was only ever meant to prevent minors from viewing pornographic material and that there is no ulterior motive whatsoever. I greeted those claims with skepticism, knowing full well the phrase “when you get a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. I wasn’t alone in seeing where all of this was really going and that the claims that such laws are only meant for one specific purpose was unlikely.
Well, that skepticism was rewarded with one of the countless “Drew Wilson was right” moments. Supporters would eventually admit that age verification laws are merely a stepping stone to ban porn outright. What’s more, once some of these laws were implemented, supporters of such laws immediately got to work to expanding age verification laws to cover social media, app stores, and even video games. Ultimately, the mask fell off and it became clear what those pushing such laws really want: a highly locked down and heavily censored and serveilled internet. This brings about another metaphor – specifically the camel’s nose. Once the camels nose is in the tent, you eventually have the whole camel in the tent.
Indeed, as I’ve earlier noted, on the lead up to the TikTok ban decision, users were already flocking to Chinese alternatives like RedNote and Lemon8. The protest was made, in part, to point out how colossally stupid the TikTok ban truly was. The mainstream media was absolutely livid with this development partly because they were likely hoping that those users would then start watching their broadcasts more now that a major competitor for attention was out of the way. Years of hard work and lobbying to kill off competition was backfiring almost overnight, undoing everything they worked for.
At first, mainstream media simply began rehashing the same old tired talking points about how the Chinese app was inherently dangerous to American users and that all of their personal information was getting slurped up by the Chinese government. The reality is if these talking points were ineffective for TikTok users, what hope do these talking points have to fly with users using RedNote? Seeing these talking points have the effectiveness of a foam ball against a brick wall, we started seeing the mainstream media take the next step.
On at least one broadcast over the weekend, mainstream media began calling for the US government to ban RedNote as well, expanding their censorship to a second app. If some outlets are starting to openly call for it, you can darn well bet they are lobbying the government hard to step up their censorship efforts. It seems that politicians are open to expanding the Great Firewall of America. From CBS:
A U.S. official told CBS News on Thursday that RedNote, just like TikTok, could face an ultimatum to divest, or be banned.
“This appears to be the kind of app that the statute would apply to and could face the same restrictions as TikTok if it’s not divested,” a U.S. official told CBS News.
So, for those who were hoping that the government censorship of TikTok was a one-time thing, well, these efforts were already taking place at least by the 16th, so even before TechDirt hit the “publish” button on offering some hope that this was possibly a one time thing for America.
This adds fuel to my perspective that we are getting ready to see the next giant game of whack-a-mole similar to what we saw in the file-sharing debates of old. It’s a game that the government is ultimately going to lose in the long run.
So, it seems likely that the internet is going to be subject to even more heavy handed internet censorship in the US. With authorities already gearing up to censor a second platform, the failure to learn from history is already becoming more and more readily apparent – and it will be the American people who pay the price for it.
