To TikTok or Not, That Is The Question
Forcing a TikTok sale or shutdown won't address the privacy and influence problems it, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook all cause. We need to broaden our approach to regulating social media.
The decision to ban or force a sale of TikTok passed overwhelmingly, and in bipartisan fashion no less, through a gridlocked Congress that otherwise can do nothing and agree on nothing.
In case you live under a rock, I’ll explain with extreme brevity: the most popular app in America, TikTok, the addictive short video site used by more than 170 million Americans, is owned by a Chinese company, and the justifiable fear is that in an oversized backroom in Beijing, Communist Party apparatchik are trading Americans’ personal info like collectors at a baseball card swap meet. Our gang that couldn’t shoot straight has finally awakened to a real threat, but has responded in a small-ball, parochial fashion.
Yes, TikTok is a threat, but so are YouTube, the Elon Musk iteration of Twitter, called X, Facebook, Instagram, and others. They all vacuum our personal data—including our whereabouts and movements, interests, purchases, and proclivities from politics to sex, yet no one thinks a thing about them.
If you think platforms don’t have outsized influence, all you need do is look at the way TikTok users swamped congressional switchboards last week when Byte Dance, TikTok’s owner, told them to. It is not a great leap to imagine the owners of the other social platforms mobilizing their followers, nor is it beyond the pale to think that any of them could secretly sway opinion on any issue. That’s what Congress is rightfully worried about—they just missed the scope of the problem.
Julia Angwin is an investigative reporter with a tech background. I listen when she speaks: “China appears to be having plenty of success pushing its political agenda through influencers on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a 2022 Associated Press investigation. And that’s my point. All of the social media platforms are information minefields, rife with deceptive content from state actors, corporations, paid influencers and others. Their algorithms fuel our worst impulses by highlighting content that promotes anger and outrage. They strip-mine our data to make money.
“Forcing TikTok to merge with another data-hungry social media platform won’t solve any of that. What will make a difference is establishing base-line privacy rules that prohibit companies from exploiting our data and that give us control over the algorithms used to manipulate us.”
Where the US Congress tends to support corporate interests more often than not, the European Union asserts itself more boldly on behalf of consumers. The EU regulates social media through the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was adopted in October 2022 and implemented in August 2023. The DSA requires companies with more than 45 million users to take steps to address the systemic risks they cause. From Google, these steps include:
• Preventing illegal content: Platforms must remove posts with illegal content, such as hate speech or fake ads
• Allowing users to report illegal content: Users should be able to flag illegal content and products
• Reducing targeted advertising: Ads based on a person's sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs are banned
• Increasing transparency: Platforms must provide more information about how their algorithms work
Like the EU, we need to figure out how to monitor and regulate social media platforms here.
Now a bit of good news: From Axios, we learn that cops have taken down a huge hacking operation. It was a coordinated effort by a task force comprised of local police, software engineers, the FBI, and assorted other crime fighting entities.
It is no surprise that the perps are Russian. The smart money says they’re funded and aided by the Putin administration. This bust was years in the making. Keep in mind that Russia adds nothing to the world of ideas or products. No one is clamoring to own the latest sleek Russian sports car or SUV—there are none, and no one is counting on their entrepreneurial corps to revolutionize (or even contribute a nominal evolution) to our understanding of healthcare, environment, industrial process, or anything else. The single thing that kleptocracy improves is digital chicanery.
That our formerly conservative GOP has decided to back the murderous autocrat, Putin, about to enter his next 6 year term in his president-for-life run, is disturbing to say the least. Yet we have senators and congresspeople who side with his dictatorial, antidemocratic ways over our own system of transparency and free expression.
How often we wonder if this crazy world can ever right itself. The digital world, so full of convenience and promise, seems to help us as it hurts us. Cyber-crime is one example. You’ve no doubt heard, and perhaps been the victim of, ransom seekers who lock up vital computer systems in both the public and private sectors. Maybe this bust signals the beginning of the end. It would be one less thing to worry about.
©2024 Jon Sinton
Well done as always!