Does the West want to play cat and mouse with Beijing over social network apps?

Bytedance, which owns TikTok, runs its Chinese equivalent, Douyin, as an educational and cultural outreach app, while the former is used in the West to idiotize young people and spread fake news, is aggressively promoting a new app, called Lemon8, which is being marketed as a combination of Pinterest and Instagram.

The timing is nothing if not prescient: in the United States, there is talk of bannning TikTok, dividing society along age and ideological lines. Young people, many of them avid users of the app, are against its ban, while older generations see it as a threat managed by a foreign government. Republicans, more inclined to authoritarian tendencies, are in the majority in favor of banning it (62%), while only 33% of Democrats support it.

Meanwhile, TikTok continues to function as a vehicle of transmission in both senses: on the one hand, it allows the introduction of all kinds of ideas into society via choreographed dances, emojis and other seemingly innocent activities; and on the other, the app’s managers have information on all its users.

The people who run ByteDance are not stupid: aware that TikTok’s popularity will inevitably wane, it has already begun promoting its next app. If the US finally bans it, creating polarization and alienating young…