Why the West should ban TikTok
Much to my puzzlement, I find myself fighting alongside none other than Brendan Carr, a Trump-appointed Republican FCC commissioner who opposes net neutrality. As a friend of mine usually says, “I can choose my battles, but I cannot choose who’s in my same trench”.
Barr’s latest battle, the umpteenth in a very long war, involves a request for Apple and Google to exclude TikTok from their app stores, one I wholeheartedly support. Apple and Google have not yet responded to the FCC commissioner’s request, but the possibility, along the lines of Trump’s executive order late in his term, is still on the table.
I have never liked TikTok. I don’t like it at all. From the moment I opened an account and evaluated its use, I found myself with an app extremely focused on virality, managed by a company devoid of even the most basic moral principles. An app created in China, obsessed since its inception with capturing and exploiting its users’ data by whatever means, and which the Chinese government very cleverly saw as a weapon it could use in the West to create complex maps of influencers to be able to manipulate public opinion and create echo chambers.
