I ventured one morning recently into the vortex of TikTok land, that nine-year-old social media platform where 1.5 billion (yes, billion) people are active users. I am a newbie to TikTok, the fastest growing social media app in the world — and now at the heart of a boiling controversy about whether its Chinese owners are a threat to America’s national security.
Legal briefs are flying all over the place in the U.S. Supreme Court to stop a ban that the Biden Administration has gotten Congress to approve, shutting down TikTok on Jan. 19 — unless it sells to American citizens. This is of interest to the mostly 18 to 24-year-olds who spend 95 minutes daily on TikTok, more than any other social network. In the U.S. — where we are more knowing and wise — users spend only 53.8 minutes on the app, 6% of their waking hours.
So, TikTok must be succeeding, declaring: “Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy.” On a random January day, I went prowling for joy on TikTok. Here is a sampler of what short-form videos I found: A young woman stands in front of an open freezer dressed like a cowgirl. A boy sings, poorly, in back. She has 20 million followers. The New York Times has 9 million.
An old man opens a 76-year-old cookie from a fallout shelter. 3.6 million followers. Abbi Michelle teaches how to put on fake eyelashes. 3.7 million. The Clemson baseball team does an on-field banana ball dance. 3.8 million. I watch soccer games, basketball dunking, arm wrestling, kayaking, Trump at a football game.
I watch a tree fall, a farmer bundle hay, a woman cleans her teeth braces, a polar bear gazes off on ice. Way too many cats do nothing. Mariah sings holiday songs. Lip-synching galore. Finally, mercifully, I stopped when I got to 53 minutes of watching. Exhausted from perusing “Life: The Movie,” bereft of anything meaningful, I crawled for coffee.
By the way, nothing even resembled a threat to national security. In fact, nothing even dealt with security and very little was about politics. When the Justice Department declared that TikTok poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale,” I can only think their lawyers had dropped mescaline and were delusional.
The government argues that because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users and its ability to manipulate that content, TikTok owner Byte Company poses a national security threat. But dating back to the 1930s, the Supreme Court has been clear that only threats related to the military would allow censorship. I went looking but it ain’t there.
So what makes TikTok any different than Amazon or Instagram or Google? If it’s simply foreign ownership, then Rupert Murdoch (Australia) should sell Fox and Elon Musk (South Africa) Twitter.
This is what we should really worry about on TikTok
Don’t get me wrong. There are some threats but the DOJ went looking in all the wrong places. Here is what should be truly worrying us:
First, manipulation of images — from AI to Photoshop — is a dangerous new development, but manipulation of information is worse. We are being propagandized from all sides. Wading through the murk and muck becomes more difficult by the day.
Free and open encounters of all sides — it is called freedom of speech — is our best chance of finding a truth. And banning any app, even one owned by foreigners, is not the solution. Censorship is more dangerous.
“This is not just about a single app,” declares Jacob Mchangama, executive director of The Future of Free Speech. “It is a litmus test for the resilience of First Amendment principles in the digital age. A TikTok ban risks setting a dangerous precedent that undermines the very freedoms distinguishing democracies from autocracies.”
Second, however, TikTok does present a danger. But it’s the same danger all the social media platforms present: they collect large amounts of personal data from users, including teens. (Some call TikTok’s collection excessive.) But this is a story we’ve heard over and over. They monetize invasive information for advertisers, no matter the danger.
In a searing report by Amnesty International, “Driven into Darkness,” the nonprofit concludes that “children and young people who watch mental health-related content [on TikTok] can easily be drawn into ‘rabbit holes’ of potentially harmful content, including videos that romanticize and encourage depressive thinking, self-harm and suicide.”
The same as all social media. A telling federal case in the state of Washington finds Alexa, that darling-voiced house slave who listens to your requests, accused of archiving queries, notably those of children. Amazon denies it, of course, saying it is only researching voice patterns. Nonetheless, Amazon has agreed to pay $25 million.
Why, we must ask, did the House of Representatives just defeat the Kids Online Safety Act, which would have begun cleaning up dangerous algorithms? The answer is the money Big Tech poured into a defeat. Note: TikTok is worth $200 billion.
Opinion:Will Trump stand up to Big Tech? Our teens need greater protections online
What are the real digital threat facing us?
Chinese ownership is hardly the threat we really face. Orwell’s “1984” envisioned a vast governmental spying apparatus. And indeed, the NSA, FBI, CIA know where I drive, what drugs I get at the pharmacy and who I talk to on the phone and online. But what has emerged alongside the government surveillance is an unregulated commercial spy sprawl.
Amazon archives my buying history, Facebook knows I still wear a Speedo and Google catalogues every Web search I make. Unless you are planning a clean sweep of all social media, don’t expect the problem of foreign — or domestic — use of your data to go away.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has been all over the lot.
“We’re banning them from the United States,” he declared in 2020. “The risks are real.”
But after he developed a following of 14.7 million before the last election, he noted his “soft spot” for the app. “
“I’m now a big star on TikTok,” the president-elect said recently.
The winds change very quickly in Trump World.
As the world of news, information, images, and entertainment has shifted online, the lines of danger — and potential censorship — are shifting.
But trying to put out of business or force new ownership on TikTok is a clear violation of the First Amendment. This is a private medium. And we have limited the categories of evil content that we allow the government to silence. Ownership, thus far, not been one of the categories.
Nor should it be. Judge my content, not my country. Rob Miraldi’s First Amendment writing has won numerous awards. He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. Email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com
