I didn’t want to write about the TikTok ban. Especially because I already did almost exactly one year ago, the last time it was a hot topic in the US government. Frankly, not much has substantively changed since then, except for a few key things. Those changes are what I want to focus on, because the way I continue to see this issue framed is boggling my mind.
As you likely saw, the US House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act on March 13. Many hoops remain, as it will have to pass the Senate (no guarantee there) and be signed into law, and Biden would have to officially designate TikTok as a national security threat for the law to go into effect, which would force the platform to prove it does not have “ties” to China (which he apparently would do) — in effect, ByteDance would have to sell TikTok.
As I wrote a year ago, and this remains true, TikTok does not do anything with our data, as far as we know, that every other major social media company doesn’t also do. They want to target us with better ads based on what they know about us and our habits — it rarely gets beyond that. Likewise, as I said then, China certainly has many other more effective ways to collect more relevant data on Americans (or Canadians) and take action on it. It simply does not need TikTok for this.
One of the key motivators here, and the reason the TikTok ban had so much bipartisan support in the House, is about political disinformation, the idea that China can make use of and weaponize TikTok to inculcate values and beliefs that align with the Chinese Communist Party. Putting aside how unbelievably simplistic this idea of behavioural modification is, there is also no evidence for it. People just be saying things. Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on this point largely because it serves both parties’ interests to pretend to be tough on China 💪 as the American empire’s #1 threat, and TikTok is the only platform of consequence that is outside of their influence (even as they, of course, fail to take meaningful action on homegrown platforms that behave the same way).
However, one thing that is different now than a year ago may not seem obvious, but is shaping much of the renewed momentum behind this ban, even if mostly on a rhetorical level: Gaza. As Adam Johnson wrote in his newsletter last week, TikTok almost certainly has been giving media consumers a more accurate picture of what is happening than mainstream outlets like The New York Times or CNN, and so “Gaza is what will put the ban over the top”:
Several pro-Israel lobbying groups have called for a ban on TikTok. Senator-turned-full-time-pro-Israel-troll John Fetterman has repeatedly blamed TikTok for younger voters’ pro-Palestine preferences, and conservative Senator Josh Hawley has as well. This has been accompanied by a parallel media panic—from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal—about how TikTok is turning your teen into a Hamas sympathizer.
Importantly, then, Democrats in particular are now less squeamish about the potential censorship implications of a ban precisely because of the Biden administration’s continued support of Israel's genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing. Put simply, these political leaders cannot abide the idea that young people in particular are, by a large majority, unsupportive of this genocide completely divorced from any propaganda but simply due to a common-sense humanity within them based on what they see with their eyes. Moreover, they cannot abide the idea that more unvarnished exposure to Israel’s war crimes through platforms that are, again, less obliged to play by their rules, is allowed to continue, let alone any other future violences that include the American war machine.
Gaza becomes a flashpoint, then, in the political calculus at play here, even as Biden desperately wants to court younger voters; even so, the TikTok ban serves a larger purpose, and the mission becomes to change the messaging rather than confront the fact that the American apparatus will not be able to control the narrative over this and future atrocities in the way they might be used to. The upshot will be, regardless of what happens to TikTok (it’s worth mentioning once again that the only firms that would even be able to buy the company are the biggest juggernauts, which would face intense antitrust opposition, among other legal hurdles), existing American Big Tech firms will continue to enjoy far less scrutiny in exchange for their cooperation, perceived or actual, with US national security concerns.
As Paris Marx wrote, this is also a reminder that Silicon Valley, regardless of posturing itself as a disruptive, even anti-authority force, has always been deeply tied to the American government, military, and defense:
Not only could US tech companies easily spread their products around the world without worrying too much about local regulation, but foreign governments were constrained whenever they tried to respond lest they run afoul of international trade rules.
While there are certainly immensely troubling aspects about China’s control over internet usage in the country, Marx reminds us that its protectionist approach to technology is the reason that “Chinese tech is the main competitor to Silicon Valley’s dominance today,” as “China limited the ability of US tech to take over the Chinese market.” This also tells us, I think, that the role Gaza is playing in this new push for a ban may really just be more of a narrative smokescreen for good old-fashioned American empire protectionism, and the ridiculous singling out of TikTok is a fantastic boon to the Facebooks and Googles of the US.
Not to be obvious about this, but Trump is apparently now against the ban, despite pushing hard for it while he was in office, and it might be because now it represents a bigger idiotic culture war over free speech, or because now that Biden likes it he doesn’t want it anymore. Either way, this just goes to show that the level of discourse here is at an all time low — TikTok is not turning teens into Hamas sympathizers, TikTok is not functionally all that different from American platforms, and TikTok is not (necessarily) a bellwether for Chinese global dominance. TikTok is, obviously, a symbol.
As Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick pointed out, the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “Do we want the data from TikTok — children’s data, adults’ data…to be staying here in America or going to China?” Broderick’s reasonable response: “What about, uh, no one? What if nobody had… our children's data?”
Right! The whole business of banning this app is a convenient distraction from the ways in which the platform economy has been set up in general, a way to obfuscate the harmful and parasitic logics of the entire ecosystem by honing our energy on a single foreign threat. We defer all discussion over TikTok’s actual practices, and those of every American platform, to the unknown — those aren’t conversations we’re allowed to have.
If anything, then, taking up Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians as the ban’s newfound poster raison d’être is just the latest in a string of cynical appropriations used to justify elite American violence and domination.
Ephemera
In case you missed it, I was published in the Montreal Gazette last week describing how the stories we were told about the internet failed to come to fruition, and how we can try to scrape some of it back moving forward.
Great Twitter thread by David Klion on misinterpretations of The Zone of Interest and, likewise, director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars speech.
If you’re interested in other Chinese tech companies exerting global power and encroaching on the West, check out this Financial Times short film on Pinduoduo and Temu.
You can join me, Paris Marx, Elena Altheman, and Ceyda Yolgörmez for a discussion on AI futures — in-person in Montreal, or online via Zoom or YouTube — March 26 at 4PM EST.
Song Rec: “Frogs” by Bolis Pupul. I like to listen to this and imagine I’m DJing in a disgusting basement somewhere.