The justification for the TikTok ban is that it supposedly collects a ton of data.
TikTok’s data collection practices are insane. The app gather data that other apps normally consider off limits, including the content of users’ private messages, and the full contents of a user’s device contacts.
I agree, this is insane. But it isn’t unusual, and it isn’t even the worst in class.
That’s a lot of data – but it’s worth noting that TikTok does not seem to collect more data than other social media companies. A privacy researcher working with the Washington Post found that TikTok gathers less data than Facebook in some cases.
So it’s obviously not about data collection. As for sharing with the Chinese government, well, Google sells user data to the Chinese thru third parties.
Perhaps it has something to do with TikTok users being against genocide?
But most revealing of all is that Biden and Trump are both trying to avoid a TikTok shutdown. See, what Congress wants is the Chinese parent company to sell TikTok to an American. But TikTok has refused and has said it will shut down on the 19th.
And here Biden is saying he won’t enforce the shutdown, and Trump saying he wants to find a solution.
It’s a shakedown.
Whatever it is, it isn’t because Congress has suddenly decided to crack down on apps collecting too much user data.
GlassHammer
It’s one of the most addictive apps you can encounter in addition to the privacy concerns.
We could have framed the ban on the addictiveness but since that is the feature most of its rivals wanted to emulate its no surprise that it never happened.
Carborundum
The valid reason to ban TikTok is that the content is short-form drivel that destroys cognitive function, as is substantially all social media. A significant majority of the competency crisis can be lain at the feet of social media and much of the rest at the feet of disintermediation more generally.
bruce wilder
Brain rot? Sounds like a rationalization to me.
Ban something with 170 million recurrent users for vague reasons — I guess we cannot claim democracy has survived surveillance capitalism.
“Disintermediation”? Say what?
KT Chong
Surprised that no one has mentioned that TikTok refugees have been migrating to RedNote or Little Red Book, and how the TikTok ban is backfiring…
The Banning of TikTok BACKFIRED | Americans Are Seeing the REAL China on RedNote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25asz5v04YU
China vs. America: Why Americans Are Migrating to RedNote from TikTok | She’s Single Magazine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-4TiocxtI
American TikTok Refugees and Chinese compares Grocery/Medical Bills on RedNote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSkAbDbvVOY
American TikTokers Angry After Joined Chinese App RedNote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkc3z5NUIX4
Chinese App RedNote Radicalizing American TikTok Refugees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAlVjRWJwqs
RedNote Accidentally Exposes Truth About China: The Tiktok to XiaoHongShu Migration, with Ben Norton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDLzET5Gvvc
KT Chong
Many American TikTok refugees are saying that RedNote is even more “addictive” than TikTok, and it is (or was) a domestic app in China used exclusively by Chinese netizens.
TikTok stores its user data inside the US, and it is not allowed to send and transfer the user data out of the US and to China.
On the other hand, RedNote does NOT have any branch, office, operation or server in the US. The app did not even have an English interface until just a few days ago. RedNote stores all its user data — including American user data — INSIDE China. You can confirm it with the AI at Perplexity. (Does RedNote has any office, operation or server in the US? “No”; Does RedNote store all its user data including American user data in China? “Yes”.)
elkern
Yeah, IMO the Kayfabe about TikTok is really about CIA/Mossad/Deepstate wanting “influence” over who sees what.
And yeah, it has created an amusing political mess here in the USA. It’s another good example of how Democrats – at least those who aspire to National office – have gotten backed into a corner where they must actively promote stupid ideas.
The obvious “solution” to this “crisis” would be for someone to sell Trump 10-20% of TikTok’s stock. It checks all the boxes: Trump gets to use the Presidency for personal gain, The Kids get to keep scrolling, and Democrats get to squawk about how corrupt Trump is.
bruce wilder
I downloaded Red Note and created an account as part of what I regarded as an act of protest. I cannot see it as a viable alternative.
I do not understand the constitutional basis for the authority to “ban” any media platform. I do not understand the ban on Al Jazeera or RT, let alone TikTok. I mean I understand those bans as an expression of corrupt authoritarianism by a “deep state” and its associated elite (“the Blob”). I mean I do not see how they can be reconciled with the liberal ideology that forms the small-c U.S. constitution. “Hypocrisy” hardly seems adequate to cover the mental gymnastics involved in any numbers of attempts to propagandize the population. But, I see banning TikTok in a context where the TPTB want to normalize genocide and a European war with Russia, not to mention multiple, simultaneous pandemics.
someofparts
Downloaded Red Note also. Thanks for the links KTC. Looks like a hoot to me. Maybe I will start hearing Mandarin incorporated into American slang. That would be fun.
Carborudum
I view “brain rot” and “bureaucratic rot” as closely related phenomena. If I can meaningfully affect the latter by banning TikTok, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.
mago
Sure. All that and more Mr Wilder.
Hypocrisy r us and we don’t give a good goddamn anymore
Gonna rant and rave and shake a fist at the sky—mouth breathing all the way
High on our own supply
tik tok tik tok goes the clock and we all fall down
different clue
The only social media I “do” is reading reddit and watching interesting videos. I don’t see how TikTok is any more brainrotty than any other social media. I started seeing RedNote videos by Angry Americans showing up on reddit ( from other places to begin with). The more TikTok Americans view RedNote, the more unhappy campers America will contain. Even more than now, I mean.
I remember hearing a radio program once describing how other country-governments addressed what they considered a TikTok security problem within their borders. They did surgical things like ban TikTok from government and other sensitive computers and other such targeted things. The fact that a “general ban” was pursued here sure does look like the goal was a shakedown . . . a forced sale to mononpoly America-based data-mining brain-rotters like Fecebook or Gurggle or some such.
I hope TikTok stays banned till the TikTok Americans display such system-destabilizing rage as to force Congress to repeal the TikTok ban law. And override President Whomever’s veto of such a ban-repeal.
bruce wilder
RE: TikTok
The basic question, to me, is whether “persuasion risk” can justify censorship under the U.S. 1st Amendment. I don’t think it can, but the TPTB differ on this. The 1st Amendment says, the U.S. government must tolerate “persuasion risk”.
I see Matt Stoller came down on the side of arguing that the Supreme Court got it right — that regulating foreign ownership and control of news Media is a legitimate means of protecting the national interest. That requires a more fine-grained argument than Matt actually offered and more than I could squeeze into a comment. I would like to see him confront the decisions to effectively ban RT and Al Jazeera and to take notice of Senator Romney and Secretary Blinken admitting that banning TikTok was all about the Hamas-Israel conflict (aka genocide). TikTok, for its part, seems to have taken note and I see an endless series of posts featuring elderly Jews arguing that Antisemitism is a terrible and urgent national and global problem.
TikTok is the apotheosis of the television commercial regurgitated in social media scroll. The seemingly magical and mysterious “algorithm” (controlled by the Chinese government) is the ghost in the machine, and fear, uncertainty and doubt are used to cloud any capacity for political judgment about whether the “persuasion risk” supposedly inherent in the algorithm and the vast trove of personal data mined to support that algorithm, actually constitute a threat to “our democracy” and “American values” (hah!) greater or different from the vast flood of commercial propaganda that has engulfed the U.S. polity since television was introduced in the 1950s. TikTok is mostly just vastly more television-commercial propaganda, promoting everything from medical quackery to home inspection services to junky gadjets to pretty young risk-takers (those with OF have to get you to go to their Instagram for the link to The Link).
The chances that a television-commercial is going make anyone a dirty commie seems to me to be vanishingly small. But, if someone were to propose a tax on all commercial advertising aimed at reducing its volume and scope, I would be in favor. Whether the time wasted doom-scrolling (love that term!) leads to brain rot (Oxford University Press’s word of the year in 2024!), at least seems plausible. More plausible than the threat to national security from people thinking a genocide is a bad thing.