The only negative social network that has received more coverage here on Leaf and Core than Twitter is TikTok. I approach any article concerning either with a groan. This is a chore, like washing dishes. Sure, I should do it, but do I want to? Not really.
To recap, TikTok is a network that has strong ties to the Chinese government, which seems to hold the same desire to disrupt the American political process as Russia. Unlike Russia, who can only use bots across a variety of social networks, China has what is perhaps the most popular social network among people under 30. The platform has censored videos about LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter protests and videos by Black creators, and blocked videos regarding China’s human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims (something they would eventually admit to, but claims they’ve stopped), including forced “reeducation camps” where women report rapes and forced sterilization, and work camps. TikTok rapidly radicalizes anyone with even slightly right of center or centrist leanings into far-right and anti-trans TikTok. TikTok also collects more information on users than any social network, including your biometric data. If you made a TikTok video, the Chinese government may have your facial recognition data. If you’re a journalist who has spoken out about TikTok, they may have tracked your GPS location. One study showed TikTok collects more data than any other social network.
TikTok isn’t just a privacy risk, like most social networks. It stands to disrupt civil rights and democracy all over the world. It is a national security risk for the sheer level of data it collects, which can empower potentially harmful AI. TikTok is one of the most insidious dangers in our digital world. It’s a shiny red apple that tastes sweet and makes you suspiciously drowsy… except it’s addictive too.
We should ban TikTok then, right? If it’s so dangerous, surely we can ban it, right? What if the medicine is as bad as the disease? Can we give up TikTok dependence without giving up our rights?
Montana has become the first state in the U.S. to outright ban TikTok. Will it be a blueprint for other states to follow, or a display of why it’s such a bad idea?
In This Article:
Reasons for a Ban
Banning TikTok from government phones is an easy and obvious step. The app is ran in conjunction with a foreign country that does not have American interests at heart, but often at odds with much of the rest of the world. The U.S. government already bans hardware and devices such as Huawei’s from government employees to protect sensitive data. Doing the same with TikTok just makes sense. But that’s not what the government is talking about right now. They’re talking about expanding that ban to consumers. Outside of government, are there concerns with the Chinese government spying on U.S. civilians? Perhaps, but certainly to a lesser degree. But what about influencing voters? That could be a problem, and perhaps a good excuse to ban TikTok.
TikTok has pushed far-right ideals on moderate to right-of-center users. This in the form of stochastic terror and threats of violence against LGBTQ people, especially transgender people today. Your bubble of TikTok might be harmless, but even slightly right-leaning content quickly slides into unbridled hate on the platform. To be fair to TikTok, the same is true of YouTube. For YouTube, however, the purpose is definitely to get more users watching and engaging with content for hours. For TikTok, especially when their censorship of left-wing topics is brought to light and manual boosting of videos, it seems there is a motive to the madness. Russia pushed controversy on both extremes of the political spectrum. It has been popular among right-wing internet users. TikTok, similarly, can have a silo effect, where people on “queer TikTok” never know that people outside of queer TikTok see videos telling them to kill queer people. They’re ignorant to the harm the network causes, and therefore don’t see the point of bans or hesitancy to use the network.
TikTok has admitted to censorship, pushing pro-China messages on users. They also stifle political action, like protests. This was especially clear during the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., where popular Black creators found their videos about the protests had hardly any views or interactions. A popular TikTok creator spoke out against China’s treatment of Muslims, and she found her videos deleted. TikTok said at the time that it was for a different reason, but admitted down the road that TikTok “back then” censored content for China, but doesn’t do that anymore. So were they lying then or now? Either way, there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Then you have the AI training aspect. With all the data the platform collects, TikTok became a tool to train AI. China’s facial recognition got faces from all around the world to better help it identify any face. They can relate it to an ID, so if you visit the country, they’ll know who you are everywhere. Object recognition can pick out items in the background, and topic recognition can help it track trends. This data wouldn’t be great in the hands of a company, but an antagonistic state power? That’s potentially dangerous, even a national security threat.
It’s clear. TikTok is dangerous. It appears to to influence, radicalize, and disrupt American politics while helping China collect unprecedented information on Americans. It’s too dangerous to be left on the App Store. Ban it!
… and YouTube… and Twitter… and definitely Facebook/Meta… and… wait, when do we stop banning dangers to our society? Did we think this one through?
How Does Montana’s Ban Work?
The ban makes the operation of TikTok illegal in the state. But what does this mean? It specifically bans:
- “the operation of tiktok by the company or users”
- “the option to download the tiktok mobile application by a mobile application store.“
This means that using TikTok, having operations in the state such as server farms, and even making the app available to users in the state would be a violation of the law. Enabling the violation of the law is the part that will incur fines. The punishment is “$10,000 for each discrete violation and is liable for an additional $10,000 each day thereafter that the violation continues.” Yes, $10,000 per violation, per day. For Apple, Google, or any other app store, making TikTok available could be extremely costly. However, the ban does stipulate that users of TikTok will not face the $10,000 ban. This bill mostly targets those who enable TikTok usage.
The bill is also careful to stipulate that it will be null if TikTok is not owned by a Chinese company. TikTok could avoid the ban by selling the TikTok operations to an American company. If ByteDance owns the company, it’s illegal. If another buyer grabs it up, and they’re not from a country listed as an “adversary” of the United States, TikTok will be allowed in the state again.
Reasons Against a Ban
I’ve brewed beer. It’s not that hard, and a few of them came out pretty good. I say this because, I see it as a fun skill to have. But, during a period in time of America’s history, I’d have been quite the criminal for that. During prohibition, companies couldn’t sell alcohol, and people couldn’t buy it. It didn’t stop drinking though. Whiskey that could rot your gut and blind you filled the speakeasies of the time. Consumers were less safe because alcohol is just too in-demand. Alcohol has been a part of human history since we started gathering in tribes. Banning something the people want, use, or even need, like healthcare, will never stop the thing you’re banning, just make it less safe.
This is, for social networks, something called “network effects.” The idea is that, because TikTok is where the people are, people won’t willingly leave. It’s the same reason Twitter didn’t completely die when Elon Musk made it all about him and his beliefs. If this is where people connect, they’re not going to let a law stop them.
Consumer Security
People will find a way around TikTok ban. However, whether or not it will be easy enough to overcome and enough people are willing to do it to preserve the network integrity of TikTok is another story. If enough people leave TikTok, it’ll lose saturation and people will abandon the platform. Shouting in an empty room is boring. On the other hand, if it’s easy enough to bypass whatever measures are taken, people will just find a way to use TikTok anyway. Someone will probably post a guide on avoiding TikTok bans… on TikTok. The problem is, many of the issues behind a ban would actually make consumer security worse. In some ways, the medicine can be as bad as the disease.
Take Montana’s ban. It’s rather open-ended, and could hit a number of different companies, from Apple and Google for providing the apps to internet service providers for not blocking it. So let’s look at a few potential problems with this process.
Sideloading Problems
First, there’s the App Store and Google Play portion of the ban. On either platform, you can sideload apps. On iOS, it’s more difficult and also requires that the app is made by a verified developer who doesn’t get banned for making their apps available for sideloading, but it’s technically possible. On Android, it’s easy, and involves changing one setting to allow the installation of unsigned apps.
What’s the problem with sideloading? On Android you’ll have to accept unsigned apps that could be from anyone. Someone could make their own TikTok app that has hidden nefarious code (more nefarious than TikToks, that is), which could steal passwords or spy on you in other ways that even TikTok deems irresponsible. Any reputable company won’t be trying to sidestep a ban. iOS developers doing it will need to cover the costs of just throwing away their ability to release iOS apps, as Apple will likely remove their licensing capabilities. These won’t be legitimate developers. TikTok won’t release their Android app, and certainly wouldn’t open source it, potentially revealing privacy issues on the platform, so any Android version will be a decompiled hack, rebuilt from working through the app backwards to generate code, and potentially include additional code. It’s just too easy to do this in a sketchy way.
Locking the Network Down
There’s a cat-and-mouse game that regulators, internet service providers (ISPs), and TikTok could play here. They could force DNS providers to not find lookup information for TikTok. This means users couldn’t just go to “tiktok.com,” and would need a specific IP address. Regulators and ISPs could block IP addresses, but these can rotate easily. They could create a layer, like the “Great Firewall of China” and other such firewalls, but encrypted VPNs can make it easy to get around these.
With the exception of the VPN, most of these options will create overhead for users. They’ll have to verify addresses and information on their own. They could use different DNS services that could have malicious code as well, sending people to a mirrored TikTok site that logs information.
Basically? These measures mean the consumer would have to be incredibly diligent to protect themselves, and that just isn’t something a teenager trying to access TikTok is going to do. The vast majority of users won’t, putting them all at additional risk.
Censorship
It’s not hard to see that this is banning a website from Americans. That has some strong first amendment issues, as it’s an infringement on freedom of speech. On top of that, some of the measures for blocking TikTok could be used to block any website. Should the government have that power? Should they potentially be able to block whoever they want? How do states decide what is legal to ban for safety and what isn’t? Could a current government decide that a lawmaker trying to strengthen gun laws is a danger to people who want guns everywhere and therefore block their website? Could democracy even survive bans like this? Regardless, this gives the government the ability to censor the internet, and that’s a power they shouldn’t have. Look at the countries that do have it… like China.
Can we really defend Americans from the villainy of China by stealing from their playbook?
Hardly the Worst Influence in America
Where is the line? Is it for apps that create danger for Americans? Then I have a few suggestions! Twitter is a place that is spreading violence through stochastic terrorism. Germany bans hate speech on social networks because the country knows what happens when you don’t. Twitter under Musk has been more permissive with hate speech, unbanning outspoken fascists and literal Nazis, and making hate speech against trans people permissible, which may have lead to actual terrorist threats against trans people, the parents of trans kids, and children’s hospitals. Not to mention many of the people Musk unbanned were outspoken antisemitic people, which really doesn’t fly in Germany. They have a lot of experience in the matter, and want to ensure such a tragedy never happens again. That’s why they’re going after Twitter now.
Should we ban Twitter? It would help cut down on hateful attacks and threats. Plus, it was the site for Russian bots looking to sow political disruption in the United States. What about Facebook? The January 6th insurrection found its roots on Facebook and Parler. Surely a social network that has been accused of causing genocide and an attack in the United States isn’t safe for public consumption.
How about Truth Social, Donald Trump’s right-wing answer to Twitter? Not only is it full of hate speech, but some of what Trump himself has shared there could be accused of stochastic terrorism as well. Some believe he seemingly called for riots and violence in New York, and all it takes is for his followers to believe the same for another January 6th to happen. After all, it has happened before.
So where do we draw the line? Is it only for foreign threats? Then perhaps Twitter, with its Russian propaganda, should be on the list still. What about domestic threats? Surely that would include Facebook, Truth Social, YouTube, and others. Where do we draw the line? It can be easy to say hateful speech should be banned. It’s easy to uphold this. Hate speech, like shouting fire in a theater, has only one outcome: death. It’s purpose is death. But banning the public square because hate speech could happen there is a different story altogether.
Political Influence
TikTok bans have held more popularity with Republicans than Democrats. This is because Republicans are more likely to be susceptible to fear over foreign threats. It’s also an age issue. Republicans are more likely to skew older, and therefore not see TikTok as a method for speaking to their peers. Democrats skew younger, and wouldn’t want to upset their base. They also may use TikTok to talk to their base. Removing TikTok would strengthen support among Republicans, but reduce the ability for Democrats to reach their base. Therefore, a TikTok ban hurts Democrats more than Republicans.
You could see why Republicans would see this as a feature, not a bug.
Can’t You Just Make it Illegal?
Maybe a government could just make it illegal to use TikTok. Arrest and fine everyone who publishes to TikTok in your state or region. First, you’d have to prove that the TikTok was posted in a state or region where it’s illegal to do so. It’s easy enough to route traffic through a VPN or the Tor network to hide its originating location. On top of that, it would be going after many teenagers. Investigating an entire school’s worth of people is just too much for law enforcement, and would require too much monitoring of internet traffic to ever be seen as anything but violently extreme. Like alcohol prohibition, but for an app. It stands to create criminals for doing something that shouldn’t be criminal in the first place, something many people do.
I don’t even use TikTok. It’s a privacy nightmare and I’m not going to prop up an app that clearly doesn’t want to distribute voices speaking in favor of human rights. I can’t support that kind of evil. But I recognize that many people don’t have a problem with that, and that’s their right.
How Do We Move Forward?
It’s clear we shouldn’t be using TikTok. There are a plethora of reasons to stop using TikTok, from dangerous bias, censorship on the platform (it made Newspeak‘s “unalive” popular for crying out loud!), tracking and data collection, and extreme polarization disrupting democracy. But it’s also clear we should not ban TikTok. TikTok may be a disruption of our society that could lead to civil unrest and actual harm. But a lot of social interaction could do that. Selectively banning one and not the others means saying some harm against certain people is okay, and only certain people can cause harm. It’s xenophobic in practice and ignores the actual hateful impact sites like Twitter have on minorities.
The best thing you can do is just stop using TikTok. The worst thing you could do is mandate it.
Sources:
- Bobby Allyn, NPR, [2]
- Bernd Debusmann Jr, BBC News
- Mack DeGeurin, Gizmodo
- Meira Gebel, DigitalTrends
- Isobel Asher Hamilton, Business Insider
- Olivia Little and Abbie Richards, Media Matters
- Robert Olson, Gizmodo
- Emma Woollacott, Forbes