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They're not going to ban TikTok (but...)

 2 years ago
source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/theyre-not-going-ban-tiktok-220857565.html
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They're not going to ban TikTok (but...)

Devin Coldewey
Wed, November 2, 2022, 7:08 AM·6 min read

We've been hearing for years how TikTok hoovers up data globally and presents it to its parent company in China, and potentially thence to the powers that be. But despite renewed calls today from FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, the popular app is very unlikely to be outright banned. That doesn't mean it will be allowed to carry on with impunity, though.

Commissioner Carr's opinion appeared in an interview with Axios, during which he stated that he doesn't believe "anything other than a ban" would be sufficient to protect Americans' data from collection by Chinese companies and authorities. (To be clear, this is him expressing his own position, not the FCC's; I asked two others at the agency for comment and have not received any response.)

This isn't the first time Carr has voiced this idea. After BuzzFeed News reported data improprieties implied by leaked internal communications, he wrote in June to Apple and Google calling the app an "unacceptable national security risk" and asking the companies to remove it from their app stores. They didn't, and now it's back to the question of federal action — first pondered by the Trump administration, which despite many actions restricting China's reach in the U.S. never managed to get a lock on TikTok.

The reason for that is pretty simple: It would be political self-sabotage. TikTok is not just a wildly popular app — it's the life raft to which a generation that abandoned the noble ships Facebook, Instagram, and soon Twitter have clung for years. And the reason why is that American companies haven't come close to replicating TikTok's feat of algorithmic addiction.

TikTok's success in gluing Gen Z to their phones isn't necessarily a good or bad thing — that's a different discussion. Taking as a given its place in the zeitgeist, however, it makes a ban politically risky for multiple reasons.

First, it would be tremendously unpopular. The disaffected-youth vote is supremely important right now, and any president, senator, or representative who supports such a ban would be given extreme side-eye by the youth. Already out of touch with technology and the priorities of the younger generation, D.C. would now also be seen as the fun police. Whether that would drive voters to the other side or just cause them to not vote, there aren't any good outcomes. Banning TikTok does not secure votes and that is fatal before you even start thinking about how to do it. (Not to mention it kind of looks like the government intervening to give flailing U.S. social media companies a boost.)


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