TikTok isn’t just one problem for American government and society; it is several different ones, all thrown together.
I’ve come around to support a total ban on TikTok for four reasons.
One, TikTok isn’t just one problem for American government and society; it is several different ones, all thrown together.
If you don’t think that TikTok has done anything bad enough to warrant a total ban — the national-security implications, the ties to the Chinese military’s surveillance programs, the data-privacy violations, the company’s constant lying about the privacy violations, the spying on journalists, the apologetics for ongoing genocide, running “the digital equivalent of going down the street to a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” the harmful effects on teen girls’ mental health, the algorithm steering teenagers towards explicit and inappropriate material . . . what would TikTok have to do in order for you to believe it deserved a ban? Or is there nothing that the company could do that would make you believe the app should be banned in the U.S.?
Two, over the course of one Republican administration and one Democratic administration, the U.S. government has communicated its concerns to TikTok many, many times in many, many ways. TikTok has basically given the U.S. government the finger and offered implausible denials of wrongdoing. TikTok has ignored many opportunities to avert, defuse, or alleviate this confrontation. Some TikTok critics will conclude the company has refused to cooperate on these issues because spying on Americans while simultaneously deluging them with depravity is the whole purpose of the app.
Three, the usual free-market consequence of learning that their favorite viral-dance-craze app is basically spyware from the Chinese government would be for consumers to realize how harmful the app is, and delete it, and find some other roughly equivalent app to use. But over time, TikTok has grown more popular among Americans in spite of the revelations about its ties to the Chinese government, not less popular.
“Let the buyer beware” is just not going to be sufficient in this situation. Heck, we can’t even get a bunch of Democratic members of Congress to stop using TikTok, even after it was banned from government devices.
Four, as I wrote earlier this month, we’re dealing with at least two demographics that are notoriously irresponsible, careless, and barely capable of understanding the long-term consequences of their actions: teenagers and Democratic members of Congress. A huge portion of the TikTok usership is teenagers, and teenagers, despite their frequent protests, are not adults who can make their own decisions in the eyes of the law or the Constitution. At minimum, a ban on users under age 18 is long overdue.