Since the rollout of the World Wide Web around 1993, some in the US have been pleading for a “free and open” Internet. These cries began as soon as some authoritarian countries decided that the Internet was not for them and they would block any attempt to implement it. These countries included China (with its Great Firewall), many countries in the Middle East, and Russia. They were terrible places because they did not want to embrace a worldwide free and open Internet. Then along comes TikTok.
Decades of American squealing about a free and open Internet devolved into an elaborate complaint not only for open access but “net neutrality,” and then a further demand of non-interference by network providers... was this all forgotten overnight?
Well, not by anyone who’s paying attention.
Now our legislators (Republicans and Democrats), President Biden, the Army, everyone in government, private sector pundits, two-bit professors, tech billionaires, CEOs, and a pitchfork-wielding angry mob are all demanding that the evil TikTok app be banished, shuttered, banned for good. You know, like those evil authoritarian anti-net governments would have done by now.
And why is this?
They tell us that TikTok is spying on children and everyone else. For China! Nobody has studied TikTok in isolation to prove any of this. So there is no proof and it’s not happening now. But it could happen!!
And that’s besides the point because the app could be used by the Chinese (I did mention that there is a connection to China, right?) to propagandize our pudding-headed youths to “hate America!” I guess that somehow TikTok could do a better job of that than literal Marxist teachers in the schools? Nothing is being done to root them out, but TikTok needs to go!
Generally speaking, the “free and open” Internet stops short when there is illegal activity. And over the years, the FBI has shut down sites selling stolen property or drugs. Various scam sites get shuttered. But TikTok is not a scam site. It is not that different from Twitter, YouTube, or any number of sites posting short videos provided by users.
It’s the user-generated content that interests a good portion of the bored masses. It sells advertising to support the site and its success seems to be at the real center of the controversy. TikTok is taking revenue away from the anointed ones: Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
The anointed ones have been funneling millions of lobbying dollars to Congress to “protect” their interests. The folks who own TikTok have not been doing this exercise in graft, so let’s put the screws to them.
The China angle will convince the public that this is virtuous. While becoming dependent on China for everything from bolts to iPhones, Americans will still see the Chinese as horrible authoritarians. So scapegoating is an easy sell. Could it be that simple?
A lot of crazy anomalies have cropped up, too. For example, the Biden administration has made a fuss and demanded that TikTok be taken off all government-provided mobile phones.
Has anyone asked why a government-provided mobile phone would have TikTok on it in the first place? Isn’t such a device supposed to only be used for official business, not for wasting time watching videos or playing games? Why doesn’t anyone point this out as nuts? What else is on these phones?
Another ignored aspect to this is the fact that the anointed ones, especially Facebook, all provide our government with scraped intelligence on each one of us. Pointing the finger at TikTok ignores the real weakness in privacy protection laws in general.
Facebook, for example, can provide a detailed roadmap of someone’s family, desires, likes, and dislikes. So what, exactly, can TikTok provide insofar as important “intelligence” is concerned?
I’m not shaking in my boots over it, that’s for sure. —- jcd