Memes

• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR): TikTok Law Is an Attempt to Censor, Not a Warning to Big Tech (Emphasis original)

  [NYT’s Cecilia] Kang’s thesis [link] was premised on years’ worth of media and policymaker fearmongering that TikTok user data was susceptible to surveillance by the Chinese government (BuzzFeed News, 6/17/22; Forbes, 10/20/22; Guardian, 11/7/22). According to Kang’s colleagues, the law’s enactment was prompted by “concerns that the Chinese government could access sensitive user data” (New York Times, 4/26/24). In 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte sought to prohibit TikTok throughout his state on the grounds that “the Chinese Communist Party” was “collecting US users’ personal, private and sensitive information” (Montana Free Press, 5/17/23). (Gianforte’s attempt was later thwarted by a federal judge.)

  If such fears were officials’ genuine motivation, one could hope that broader data-privacy regulation might follow. Yet, as the Times neglected to mention, the spying accusations are tenuous—and deeply cynical. As even US intelligence officials concede, apprehensions about China’s access to TikTok user data are strictly hypothetical (Intercept, 3/16/24). And, despite its bombshell headline “Analysis: There Is Now Some Public Evidence That China Viewed TikTok Data,” CNN (6/8/23) cautioned that said evidence—a sworn statement from a former ByteDance employee—“remains rather thin.”

  Given their dubious nature, it’s hard to see these data-privacy claims as anything other than a pretext for the US to throttle TikTok. By forcing either divestment or a ban, the US, at least in theory, wins: It transfers a tremendously lucrative and influential company into its own hands, or it prevents that company from serving as a platform—albeit one with plenty of problems—on which people can engage in and learn from discourses that are critical of US empire.

• CNN, 2022: TikTok moves US users’ data to Oracle servers to address security concerns
• US private equity firms own more of TikTok than anyone. WSJ: What Is TikTok Worth? Some Say $20 Billion, Others Say $100 Billion. The CEO is Singaporean, Shou Zi Chew, and the VP is American, Michael Beckerman.
• [Mitt] Romney Admits Push to Ban TikTok Is Aimed at Censoring News Out of Gaza

  "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down, potentially, TikTok or other entities of that nature," said Romney. "If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."

• Paris Marx: The TikTok ban is all about preserving US power The platform isn’t a national security threat, but a challenge to Silicon Valley’s dominance

I point none of this out to defend TikTok as some beacon of hope: it’s just another corporate social media platform. I don’t have a TikTok account and don’t use it.