The more I think and read about the tiktok ban, the more convinced I am that it’s a bad idea, because it increases concentration in Big Tech without any evidence TikTok has done what it’s accused of.
The proposal is to give the Secretary of Commerce the power to ban technology companies without legal process if the Secretary deems those companies to be a national security threat.
The United States has basically no laws regarding data collection or privacy, or moderation on social media, or algorithm transparency. TikTok can’t be charged with anything or fined for anything because no tech company (domestic or foreign) is bound by any US laws in this area.
It’s important to remember that in the United States we don’t go around banning stuff just because we don’t like it, even if it’s bad or harmful, because this is a free country.
As far as it goes, TikTok is generally similar or less harmful than other apps for mental health, and it seemingly has more responsible moderation of violent or hateful content. People who use the platform seem to enjoy it, and it has tens of millions of users (I think 150 million is inflated) who will be harmed by a ban.
A ban will also decrease competition in social media, an industry that’s already too concentrated. Meta, Google, Snap, and even Twitter* are trying to compete with TikTok.
*Watch a video and scroll up (no idea if Elon knows about this feature or is going to try to do anything with it)
That competition is good and badly needed, but I’m sure the tech behemoths hate it because they can’t sit back and collect billions every month.
I’ve heard three main arguments for banning TikTok. None is wholly without merit, but they’re also not very convincing. The first is that TikTok will misuse user data, possibly for espionage. The second is platform manipulation for propaganda purposes. The third is that the app is addictive and therefore bad.
I find the user data argument unconvincing because I know of no other case where Congress cares about data privacy. Congress has come to work every day for the last 30 years (ok, well, 5 hours a day, 3 days a week, 7 months a year) and not passed any guidance, framework, or regulation about how user data can be collected, stored, or used. They did pass FISA and the PATRIOT act though, allowing the US government basically unlimited access to any data they can get their hands on without any meaningful restriction.
I know of no specific allegation that TikTok is gathering data from its users in a way that’s out of line with what Google, Meta, Amazon, etc. do. I know of one specific allegation that TikTok used a reporter’s IP address to track her location and try to nail down her sources—which is pretty bad and is the kind of thing that would be illegal if the US had a data privacy law (Per Kara Swisher US companies have also done things like this and were not banned or punished in any way).
It is true that apps like TikTok can be used to spy on people. The US has used this to great effect in Ukraine, both to get information about military plans and to help Ukraine target strikes. On the eve of the invasion you could see Russian troops massing along the Ukrainian border based on traffic reported on Google maps. Naturally the US would like to have an advantage over China in this regard.
I think it’s not unreasonable to ban TikTok on government devices. I think it would already be covered by the requirement that government devices be used for work purposes but I have no problem with making that explicit. Broadly speaking I think we should understand smartphones to be easily-hacked espionage devices in any situation where that matters. I don’t think the incremental value of TikTok in this regard is all that big. Consider that Chinese companies make uncounted billions of physical things that we import to the United States.
I want to point out also that the intelligence community has not earned our trust or our deference. Given their record, it would be absurd for us to accept that tiktok is a threat just because they say so. If they have a specific reason to believe it’s a threat they should state it publicly, with evidence. That’s how public policy works in a democracy.
Platform manipulation too is a charge with a lot of noise and little evidence, and which even if true violates our understanding of how the government can (and more to the point, can’t) regulate speech.
The charge here is that TikTok is using its platform to promote users who make anti-American or pro-Chinese content. I haven’t seen any evidence from proponents that this is actually happening, only speculation that it’s something the Chinese government would want to do, and could force ByteDance to implement. TikTok seems to me like it’s mostly nonpolitical content (I don’t use it), and the political content is largely what you’d expect from a bunch of 21 year olds given current political coalitions.
Russia has, infamously, used social media to deliver propaganda to Americans: Facebook in 2016 was beset by Russian troll farms. This is certainly undesirable although it’s not clear that the fake news operation did much to affect the election. YouTube has been a cesspool pushing far right content (and also sometimes propaganda for foreign terrorist groups like ISIS) for as long as it’s been around. On Twitter (now owned by a consortium of Elon Musk and Saudi Arabia)—well, you know. Outright propaganda outlets like Xinhua and RT have accounts on every major network. It’s worth mentioning once again that Congress has passed no law about how this can and can’t work.
Even beyond that, we’re talking about algorithms boosting political speech by Americans, and Congress trying to weigh in to mandate how that should be done and what political content is acceptable. I won’t go as far as to say that it’s a violation of the first amendment but I think it violates the idea that the government doesn’t get to decide which speech is good and which is bad.
Finally, people say that TikTok is just harmful because it’s an addictive timesuck. I’m not going to spend a lot of words on this because I think it’s very obvious that TikTok is not a special case and that there are all sorts of things that are much more obviously harmful that the government doesn’t ban: Guns, giant SUVs, sugar, cigarettes, alcohol, coal, Fascism, payday loans, Herbalife MLM, those trees that generate all that pollen, cattle ranching, gas stoves, etc.
For all three of these arguments people will point out that TikTok is banned in China itself. I want to talk about that because it reflects badly on China but doesn’t argue for a ban: Chinese internal censorship is so extreme that no American would abide it, because this is a free country and we are allowed to criticize our government, China’s government, whoever we want. We are allowed to be gay or trans in public, talk about how we love our freedom, call Taiwan a country, and speak out against the Uighur Genocide. The Chinese people, under the watchful eye of its vengeful government, have been forced to accept a profoundly limiting censorship regime. What this means is that no platform Americans would use could comply with these rules. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, etc are all also banned in China.
So I think the case for a ban doesn’t hold up on the merits. But I also think it’s bad politics. Yes, polling shows that the American public largely supports a ban, but this is an issue with very unbalanced salience dynamics, namely that non-users mostly support a ban but don’t care whereas TikTok users oppose a ban and will actually be affected by it.
I hope Congress and the Biden administration will reconsider.
Gamma Factor 