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The proposed ban on TikTok annoys me although I have never used it. Since I live in the United States, the CCP cannot do anything to me anyway so why should I care if they spy on me? If anything, I should be at least somewhat more concerned about the NSA spying on me because unlike the CCP, the US government can actually do something to me. There is not even any valid national security justification. Banning people who work at nuclear power plants and the military from using TikTok at work would be enough to satisfy national security concerns. I find it hard to understand how the idea of a blanket national ban on TikTok even became popular enough to go to Congress. To me it just seems like an infringement of free speech and free association. If I want to use TikTok while knowing that the CCP is collecting my data, so what? The CCP is a horrific government according to my value system, but Americans help them a lot more already by buying their manufactured goods than by using TikTok. It is hard for me to understand this proposed ban as anything other than a symbolic gesture, a sign of the sometimes understated unity that exists between mainstream Democrats on the one hand and conservatives (Trumpists included) on the other when it comes to near everything other than culture war issues, a lashing out against all possible enemies of the Wolfowitz doctrine that would properly be seen as silly soft authoritarianism if it issued from Russia or China. Should we not be better than Russia and China, though?
There is also the other angle of "won't somebody please think of the children?" But the moral fracas around the damage that social media is supposedly doing to children seems to me to have all the signs of a moral panic. Not because social media is not doing any damage to children, but because it is a slippery slope argument. There are plenty of great novels and works of poetry in libraries that also would do damage to a sensitive child, and certainly there are plenty of peer groups that a child might be exposed to which would need to have no recourse to electronic communications to also do damage to that sensitive child, but the authentic liberal response is not censorship. There is something that I find unpleasant about the whole idea of viewing information or an information medium as inherently damaging. But then, I am a liberal. The way I see it, by all means if you find the CCP to be morally objectionable then do not buy their goods or use their services, but is this a restriction that the United States government should impose?
I'm worried about this one. It has bipartisan support between (to my understanding) the pro-censorship wing of the left and the China hawk wing of the right. Both groups hold a lot of power in Washington. The powers the RESTRICT act grants are broad and vague and would extend far past simply banning TikTok were it to be passed.
There are four points generally put forward by proponents of banning the app. I'll try to address these as best as I can. If I'm missing or misrepresenting one, let me know. These points are:
TikTok is should be banned because it harms the attention spans of young people and acts as a bad influence purely as a social media platform, independent of any Chinese interference.
TikTok has the potential as Chinese social media to let the CCP use algorithms to promote harmful viewpoints among American users.
TikTok gives the CCP unprecedented ability to spy on us and collect blackmail on future leaders through user data.
The CCP is our (the USG's) enemy and we should block any gains in cultural, political, or material power they are making and with any means at our disposal.
To the first point. There's no accusation of poisoning our youth, ruining our attention spans, or breaking our minds you can level at TikTok that doesn't also apply to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, etc. All of them promote political extremism and use algorithms of varying complexity to feed users personalized content. TikTok is much better at creating a curated feed, but that's not for lack of trying on the part of its competitors.
An argument to ban TikTok for this reason is an argument to ban all of them. There are plenty of people who would YesChad at this, which is a fair position. I'm not on board with banning these sites for freedom of expression reasons, but they've caused a lot of genuine harm and are likely a net-negative on happiness overall. However, I don't think this is on the table regardless. The 1st Amendment will (rightfully) prevent the government from banning social media apps over this, and the RESTRICT act will only lead to a more regime-controlled version of them. Our lawmakers want to put social media more under government control, not ban it.
Also, if your politics are outside the American overton window, how exactly will you get your message out without social media? Would you believe the things you currently hold to be true if not for the narrative control the Internet has wrested from the government and legacy media? In the 20th century, there were only a few, tightly-controlled media companies that had any messaging power. Your worldview was constrained to what they, and the people around you, found acceptable.
Point two is the psyop potential we are giving the CCP. I'm not sure they have the competency to actually do anything meaningful to us, but it is a fair concern for the future. But what can they do to us that we haven't done to ourselves in the past 8 years, exactly? I believe this point is pushed disingenuously by censorious legislators to pass a law that will give them greater narrative control against their real enemy — domestic opposition, but I will go more into that further down.
Point three is that TikTok gives the CCP huge amounts of user data on Americans. This is a valid concern, and I can see the blackmail potential they would have on future leaders through leaking DMs, nudes, embarrassing old videos, etc. At the very least, I understand why we would want to block TikTok on the phones of anyone who works in the military or in a sensitive government position.
If your position is that no one should get to harvest our personal data, I support you and would like to see that privacy enshrined in law. If your position is that only China shouldn't get to do that… You may disagree with me on this, but as an entity, the CCP's ability to ruin my life seems much more... distant than the USG's. The current regime seems very interested in pointing the state at right-wingers. The linked press release describes the Biden administration's plans for dealing with domestic terrorism, with the outlined targets being white identity extremists and militia people. You may trust the Biden admin to fairly interpret the phrase "domestic terrorist," or trust our 3-letter agencies to not abuse their power or fabricate evidence, but the last few years have destroyed any trust I have in them.
Simply put, if I had to choose one state to get my data, I'd choose the CCP, simply because I'm a world away from them and have no power to break down my door should they desire to. They are not as much of a threat to my freedom or safety as the American government that views many of its citizens as domestic terror threats. I've no illusions about which country I'd actually want to live under, and the USG is not even in the same ballpark of political repression as the CCP, but that doesn't mean I trust my government with our data.
Point 4 is the China Hawk position many Republicans hold. The reasons for this are a combination of China's threat to U.S. hegemony, its desire to spread its politics and influence to client states, the desire to have a "common enemy" to reunite Americans on shared ground, and military-industrial complex-driven greed/warmongering.
This may be the position that gets the most pushback, but I just don't care about China. I don't want to spend more American money and lives on foreign conflicts when there is so much to work on domestically. I don't like the ideology and policies we are exporting to the rest of the world and don't want it to spread completely unopposed. I don't want to die in some "unifying" conflict across the world for a government that pushes domestic policies designed to economically and politically disenfranchise people who look like me. The USG has lost the Mandate of Heaven and it should focus on getting that back, rather than picking more fights abroad.
This is all before we get into what the RESTRICT act gives the government the power to do, which is a lot. It empowers the Secretary of Commerce and the President with the "authority to take any... action as necessary" against information and communications technology products and services that are deemed to be owned or controlled by foreign adversaries and present a national security act.
As I understand it, this would be a process that would require approval by committee, not congress, and lets the President or Secretary bypass 1st Amendment protections to move against any tech or social media company that they deemed to be foreign influenced. This would apply to social media, tech, crypto, etc., and gives these two individuals the power to go after any company they like at will after some procedural outcomes.
I've seen how freely the Russian Interference accusation is baselessly thrown around. It was used by our intelligence agencies to justify shutting down the Hunter Biden story in election time without any supporting evidence. I have no illusions about how this is going to be used, if the act is passed. It will give our government the power to do what it's wanted to for a long time: go after cryptocurrencies and enforce regime control on any platform it wants, free of the pesky constitutional freedoms that prevent it from doing so. It seems like a modern Patriot Act, or an updated Sedition Act of 1918.
I personally have the stance that we should not make things easy at all for China to fuck with us since they're clearly putting themselves into contention with us for superpower status, and I'm not very curious to see what the world will look like with China at the top. At the same time, though, as you note, this isn't worth singling out TikTok if for no other reason than it's not any more guilty than other social media services.
I would personally "restrict" all social media insofar as designating them as Common Carriers and implementing tougher privacy protections and better transparency, and if TikTok can't rise to that standard, then fuck 'em. Otherwise, as CCP-phobic as I may be, I will readily admit that this is rather unfair and clearly biased of The Powers That Be.
China won’t be at top. Power will be multi modal.
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I agree with this, and at this point, this is also how I feel about the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Sure, it sucks that Russia invaded them, and ideally they shouldn't have done that, but so what? If Ukraine falls, America is still separated from Russia by a continent and is completely secure. Russia has no reason to invade any NATO members, and if they did, that would be justification enough to annihilate them.
Poland and the Baltics are members of NATO and Russia has reason to invade them.
No, it doesn't. There are real and serious reasons for Russia's invasion of Ukraine that are simply not there for those other countries. I'm willing to bet 100 USD in monero, right now, that Russia does not invade Poland or the Baltics (with an exception for if they start attacking Russia) in the next two years.
Please expand on those real and serious reasons. If Russian aggression is to be limited to Ukraine, why attempt to stir unrest in Moldova? (Why leave Moldova out of your bet?) Why do senior Russian officials admit an intention to "denazify and demilitarize" Poland? Was it because Ukraine was leaning towards joining Nato? If so, the same calculus must surely apply to Finland, too: "Finland’s accession to Nato would have serious military and political repercussions.".
I won't take your bet, but that's only because the Russian armed forces have broken themselves against the Ukranians and are rapidly losing the strength necessary to pursue a campaign in the Baltics. I propose the following alternative conditional bet: If Russia takes Kyiv in the next three months, then Russia will invade another of its neighbors before 2033.
Russia believed that a Ukraine controlled by the US/NATO would be used to host nuclear missile interdiction systems which would give US officials the false belief that they could launch a nuclear first strike against Russia and avoid retaliation. The US has consistently violated their informal agreement to not expand NATO closer to Russia and interfered with the government of the Ukraine back in 2014. Crimea was an immensely, strategically important port for Russia that they could not afford to let fall into US hands. The Russian-speaking minorities in the Donbass being mistreated are a real reason but not a particularly serious one (lmao at the idea of the Russian government being a charitable, humanitarian body). Russia made it abundantly, overwhelming clear that they considered the expansion of NATO to their doorstep an existential threat - and they have acted in ways consistent with that belief.
If you don't think any of these reasons are real or serious, consider what would happen if these things took place on the US' doorstep: China starts making noise about the necessity of exporting communism around the world, freeing people from capitalist exploitation, and then their ambassador to Mexico provide support to a bunch of people protesting in Mexico city, taking photos and handing out food. A phonecall leaks out where the Chinese ambassador to Mexico says "Fuck the US" and then picks out their preferred candidate for President - who then actually gets the top job. Chinese military forces start showing up in Mexico to provide training and equipment, and there's talk about setting up anti missile systems in the area to protect against US aggression. Spots in Mexico with lots of english-speaking ethnic Americans (I don't think these actually exist but just imagine they do and the US cares about them) start getting shelled with artillery and discriminated against. Then, a major US military base/naval facility is told that they're no longer welcome in Mexico and the land they're built on will be repossessed. Afterwards, Mexico announces that they're going to join the SCO and start hosting Chinese military forces and equipment in large numbers right on US border.
Can you honestly claim with a straight face that this would not produce an apoplectic fit of rage from the US government? The actions which prompted the Cuban missile crisis are chump change compared to what the US has done in the Ukraine.
Unless you have a stronger source for those claims than "US intelligence" I'm going to just dismiss them as the same kind of fiction as the claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and sponsored 9/11, Iraqi soldiers removed babies from incubators in Kuwait, the NSA did not monitor domestic American phonecalls, Russia had compromising material on Trump, Crossfire-Hurricane didn't happen, Trump is about to be arrested, the Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, etc etc. Evidence-free assertions from US intelligence like that are demonstrably less reliable and more consistently wrong than Paul the Octopus' predictions of football results.
If you're taking Kadyrov's comments like that seriously then you would have had to take Wesley Clark's comments about invading Iran, Syria etc seriously as well (to say nothing of the crap that comes out of John Bolton). High-ranking military officials often make toothless threats like that for a variety of reasons.
From the article:
This isn't a threat to invade. This is a threat of economic sanctions and militarisation of the border - "corresponding symmetrical responses on our side" would only include invasion if Finland had also announced their plans to invade Russia... but I don't think that actually happened.
Because Jiro did not mention it. If he had said "Poland, the Baltics and Moldova are members of NATO and Russia has reason to invade them." I would have included it in the bet.
Your bet lasts for far more time and fails to include a provision about retaliation. I also have no desire to put some monero into escrow for an entire decade. I disagree with your thoughts on the Russian armed forces and their relative strength - but if you come up with a more reasonable wager I'll still take it.
I am pretty sure that USA invaded Syria, is there right now and bombed target in Iran recently. See https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/missile-attack-targets-us-base-east-syria-security-source-media-2023-03-24/
So yes, I treat it seriously that Russian leadership wants to attack Poland and they are not doing solely because that is infeasible, but would be happy to rerun 1939 and murder/rape/loot/conquer.
I think I missed USA bases on Russia-Ukraine border.
There was no such thing, and given that Russia happily violated formal agreements they would have no reason to complain.
You missed part that shelling targeted invading army.
I was referring to the "seven countries in seven years" comment. It didn't happen.
That's what Ukraine joining NATO would effectively entail.
Wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/12/russias-belief-in-nato-betrayal-and-why-it-matters-today
Can you please provide a source for the claim that Russia sent an invading army into Ukraine in 2014?
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‘Russia invading its neighbors’ is not exactly going out on a limb, but it seems to focus on picking off former parts of the Russian empire which are squalid and poor.
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This is a brush-off, not an answer.
Even if I bit the bullet that TikTok is only as bad as the worst US social media site, there's still an argument for US citizens preferring to not have it, because US sites are at least forced to be more responsive to US concerns.
Socially negligent and corrosive messages spread for profit are bad. It may be worse to have a peer rival doing the same thing to you for strategic reasons - presumably at moments pivotal to strategic competition.
Fair, I should have expanded on that point some more. The psyop potential isn't ideal, but you might have to pick your poison here. Under the proposed law, the loss in Chinese narrative control would just be replaced by unprecedented expansion of federal power to do the exact same thing. The Twitter Files made it clear that the feds found it in their interest to coerce social media platforms to enforce a narrative via implied threat of regulation. I'd rather not give them the power to ruin any tech company on their shitlist by having an unelected committee declare it to be a foreign asset.
I understand if you disagree on the value judgement here. I'm no CCP fan, but since I don't live there I'm less concerned about them than I am domestic government overreach. If your response is we should still ban TikTok, just not this way — how should we do that without massive increase in government power or curtailing our free speech?
All fair points. My personal take is that all these sites need more guardrails (e.g. Haidt's suggestion of an "internet age" to keep out young kids) but I'm not convinced that any of this will go past TikTok. Most likely outcome is they nuke TikTok and then everyone else continues to do the same thing. If that's what's going to happen then your concerns give me more pause.
I don't recall what specific incidents this is referring to - I guess I have to go back into the Twitter Files kerfuffle.
This is the main thrust of it from Matt Taibbi from his statement to congress this month. I don't know why they released the leaks as tweets; it's impossible to find specific receipts for these statements when they're broken up between 20 threads over several accounts...
By implied threat of regulation I mean the unsaid thing that would be on these companies' minds when they received a communication like this — what will they do to us if we refuse to comply? These requests weren't based off a legitimate court order, just the government saying "We'd really like it if you stopped this person from saying things we don't like." Right now they're doing the most they think they can get away with, ReportMaxxing and informal requests, so if given increased jurisdiction over content we have good reason to suspect what they'd immediately start doing with it.
Wasn't it part of the agreement that got them access to the internal data in the first place? A quid pro quo that benefits the platform. Taibbi does have an index of the threads with executive summaries on his news website/substack.
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