The TikTok Conundrum

We've once again out-kicked our coverage where technology is concerned. It's time to catch up.

We’ve all come to understand that social media is an addictive and risky proposition in our personal lives, our politics, and especially to the still-forming minds of our young people. A huge problem is that we don’t know exactly how damaging it is.

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently wrote, “Because platforms have not given researchers access to the data they need to better evaluate the effects of social media on kids, parents don’t know the full extent of the dangers or how to protect their children. Manufacturers of physical products—from medications to car seats, and toys to automobiles—are required to meet safety standards. Consumers are not expected to evaluate the safety of these products on their own. The same should be true of social media.”

Fearing that the Chinese Communist Party via TikTok can not only see our personal data, but can use it to influence us with its own disguised posts designed to spread lies and foment distrust and unrest, Congress is considering outlawing the platform, or forcing a sale to a domestic owner without ties to the CCP.

What remains unsaid is that social media at large hoovers up every user’s data and packages it for sale to anyone with more than two bottle caps and a AA battery in their pocket. All China has to do—what it does now—to get in everybody’s digital knickers, is buy our personal data from one of the many legal commercial data sellers.

The data brokerage industry is the real lynch pin here, so instead of focusing exclusively on China, we should stop trying to selectively prune, and pull this plant up by the roots by moving swiftly to restrict personal data gathering online, just like the European Union does. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, What’s App), Google (Android, YouTube, G-Docs), and Elon Musk’s financially starved Twitter, all hate the idea since their pockets are lined by the sale of this data.

It's time we started thinking like the Sanitation Commissioner of New York City, who reminds us, “The rats don’t run this place, we do.”

The truth is, the entire industry is out of control. As is so often the case, technology advances faster than humans are able to understand its implications, and problems ensue. It matters not whether we’re talking about horse-drawn carriages co-existing with early automobiles, or regulators and parents trying to apply old rules to new problems like social media, we’re destined to struggle. The case can be made that it’s the struggle that makes us grow, and that growing pains are the price of progress. Still…

Sometimes Congress is the first to act, but the last to understand. They think it’s good politics to ban TikTok, while doing nothing to protect us from the giant technology companies and the data brokers that enable each other. The proposed political solution is a fig leaf where a hazmat suit is required.

Something that has become painfully obvious over the years is that mis- and dis-information are rampant on the social platforms, and thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the platforms are not responsible for the content they carry. Section 230 is a throwback to the dawning of the age of telephony, where Ma Bell was considered a “common carrier” that was not responsible for what users said over the phone.

Immunity from civil liability for content posted on their platforms by third party users (you and me) was fine in the infancy of the internet when the law was drafted, but the social platforms are gargantuan now, and long ago surpassed all previous media in audience size and time spent using, rendering this law the equivalent of a buggy-whip in the Space Age.

You’ll learn more about domestic politics from TikTok and its ilk than you ever will from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. They are authoritative—the Times is considered the Paper of Record not just here but worldwide—but the things you learn from well crafted journalism are different than what you’ll get by being a fly on the wall of social media.

I come back to the EU that has, in the name of privacy, restricted the gathering and monetizing of user’s personal data, but we also need to hold the platforms accountable for the content they traffic. Tellingly, China disallows all but educational content—mostly STEM subjects—from kids under 14, and restricts most social media to those over 14, while limiting the time it can be used by teens. Maybe good ideas, but ones a free society can’t enforce.

We’ll need to tread carefully here so as not to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of users and platforms, while somehow protecting ourselves from the divisive and addictive qualities of this relatively new technology that has swamped our boat.

©2023 Jon Sinton