As moral panics go, the TikTok fear gripping the nation's political class is fairly standard stuff. The social media platform is popular with kids, who've used it to develop a culture seemingly apart from that of their parents and other authority figures. It's a Chinese company, to boot, which checks all the national security concerns of pols facing voters in an election year.
And so, like waves of panic over rock and roll, comic books, movies, video games, skirt hems, and countless other things, this new evil must be banned. Not controlled. Banned.
Unless it's sold to an American company. In that case, everything's fine.
Forget the panic. Nevermind the national security. This is all about control:
The bill's primary backers, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), say the app poses “a grave threat to U.S. national security” due to its Chinese ownership, and they warn that TikTok could be used to influence U.S. public opinion or harness user data to spy on Americans. ByteDance is controlled by Chinese authorities, they contend, and they describe the app as “Communist Party malware.”
But the bill's sponsors have pushed back on the idea that they want to “ban” TikTok, saying their objective is to rid it of foreign control.
“America's foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States,” Gallagher said in a release announcing the bill.
So if a dominant media company that's U.S. based creates a platform that in every other way is the same to the existing platform…it's fine?
It seems to be so. While this takes transactional politics to a new level, it also shows that our politicians, left, right, red and blue, find it easier to tackle the sins of a foreign social media company than it is to address the ongoing, and far more invasive, data mining, manipulation, and commerce going on right here at home.
Consider this example, via TechDirt about a bankrupt data broker whose biggest asset was up for grabs:
When it originally went public, Near bragged about how they owned a database tracking the movement and online behavior of 1.6 billion people across 44 countries. But the company went bankrupt last year, and, as The Markup notes, there was a real risk that this database would fall into the hands of any number of random knobs and shitwhistles looking to exploit and abuse it.
Enter Ron Wyden's office again, which sent a letter to the FTC last week urging the agency to step in and block the transfer of this data. As The Markup notes, the FTC agreed, and an order this week blocked the sale or transfer of a huge trove of user data…
And while we're on the subject of privacy…let's never forget that our own government is one of the biggest abusers out there.
Not that Congress will rear up to stop federal agencies or law enforcement from subverting constitutional privacy and due process protections. Those agencies act in the name of keeping us safe from various hobgoblins – real and imagined.
If we prevent them from snooping without so much as a warrant, the terrorists win. Or something. And besides, it's easier, cheaper, and more fun to attack TikTok than protect the average person's privacy from our own government's extra-constitutional prying and spying.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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