The United States is set to ban TikTok over the weekend. Since exploding in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, TikTok’s role in internet culture and broader American culture has only grown. With it, so have concerns about data privacy and cultural subversion by the Chinese government, whom many fear may have access to American data through the app and intentionally undermine Americans through TikTok’s world-class algorithm and the content it delivers to users.
I have mixed feelings about the ban.
On the one hand, yes, TikTok should probably be banned. Though its leadership has repeated on several occasions that American user data is not housed in China or accessible by its leaders, it’s hard to imagine that TikTok leadership wouldn’t give in to demands the Chinese government may make at any time to access American user data in a way that may be harmful to national security.
Frankly, in my view, the more urgent threat of TikTok is as a sort of cultural Trojan horse of the Chinese government. The cultural degradation and mental health impacts of TikTok are well-established, and the Chinese version of the app is notably less harmful, suggesting China has intentionally given Americans a more addictive version of the platform. On top of this, Americans’ trust of their government and its leaders is at virtually the lowest its ever been, and in the wake of the impending ban, American TikTok users have started learning Mandarin at record rates (according to Duolingo), and downloading other Chinese social media apps in spite.
If using TikTok as a cultural Trojan horse was a goal of its injection into American life, that goal has succeeded, and a ban is unlikely to reverse any of the fallout of that reality.
But we should be clear about what we are doing in banning TikTok. If the ban is due to fears about excessive data collection and what untrustworthy actors will do with that excess of data, then surely TikTok is not the only app or platform that should be targeted legislatively? For example, another popular app collects the following data on all its users:
If TikTok must be banned then we should, obviously, be in favor of banning an app with data collection like this, right?
Given that the above is a list of Facebook Messenger features, I think it’s time for Congress to consider a ban on this Meta application.
After all, if we’re concerned about censorship, the manipulation of users, or other such malpractice, Meta has made it clear such malevolence doesn’t require a dictatorial regime half a world away.
Sure, maybe it’s time to ban TikTok. But let’s be careful not to think that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are the only or the most urgent threat to American welfare when it comes to how we use our phones. Maybe the Silicon Valley founder cosplaying as a libertarian oligarch deserves our attention, too.