Congress Wants to Ban TikTok … Again
Gotta love freedom through censorship
This bill's name sounds like something you want to support. Averting the national threat of influence by the Chinese Communist Party sounds like a cause that all Americans should rally behind. What probably goes through most Americans' heads when they hear this bill’s name is, “I’m not a Communist; why would I oppose a bill that is trying to stop the Chinese Communist Party's influence on impressionable American Children? It’s in the name”.
This reminds me of another bill: The Patriot Act
Most Americans in 2001 probably had the same thought process when they heard the bill’s name: The Patriot Act. America was just attacked by a foreign terrorist causing nationalism and security concerns to be at an all-time high. If there was any time to be a patriot, that time was now. If you loved America and wanted to protect it, then why wouldn’t you support a bill literally named The Patriot Act? If you didn’t support it, you were probably a terrorist sympathizer.
That’s what happened The Patriot Act passed in the Senate 98–1 with Sen. Russ Feingold from Wisconsin being the only dissenting vote. Sen. Feingold proceeded to lose his next election after being marked as un-American because of his vote against The Patriot Act. Did Sen. Feingold turn his back on America by not supporting this bill or did he know something that the rest of the Senate and most of America did not?
The Patriot Act turned out to have little to do with protecting Americans from terrorists and more to do with expanding the American government and federal agencies' powers to unlawfully spy on American citizens and undermine our right to privacy. The Patriot Act seemed to be less of a protection of American citizens and more of an attack on our constitutional rights.
John Seigenthaler, an American journalist who specializes in the First Amendment, wrote this in his report:
The Patriot Act has weakened citizens’ rights by allowing government access to confidential information and authorizing so-called ‘sneak and peak’ search warrants without probable cause.
Turns out as convincing as the bill's name was, the Patriot Act was a terrible bill for American citizens. Hopefully, American citizens will be a lot more skeptical when they hear a pretty-sounding bill and that is the lesson I wanted to hammer on with the Anti-Social Chinese Communist Party Act.
The Anti-Social Chinese Communist Party Act
The Anti-Social Chinese Communist Party Act sounds seems really good at first glance but so did the Patriot Act. The real question is will the bill actually do anything to protect and serve American citizens? Supporters of the bill have two main claims.
The first concern is that TikTok’s (owned by Chinese company ByteDance) ties to the Chinese government make the company a security threat to U.S. democracy because the Chinese government has a law that forces the companies to share all privately held information with the government. FBI Director Christopher Wray stated the second concern in a Senate hearing that he was “extremely concerned” by the Chinese’s governments ability to influence American citizens through the app.
TikTok claimed that all American data is stored outside of China and that keeps it protected from the overreach of the Chinese government. TikTok later admitted that Chinese TikTok employees do have access to American citizens' data; one can safely assume that the Chinese government has access to American citizens’ data. Even though, is stripping Americans of their freedom of choice to engage with TikTok the best policy option?
I’m not defending the Chinese government having access to American personal data but the American government has been lackadaisical, if not cooperative, in allowing private companies to exploit American citizens' data. Privacy concerns from private companies have been voiced in the United States for almost a decade now and yet legislatures still have done very little to protect Americans. The European Union (EU)has already created a legal framework through its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that American lawmakers could copy.
How the EU protects Europeans privacy
The EU’s GDPR forces any company operating inside the European Union to comply with certain standards to protect the private data of individual citizens. The GDPR outline seven compliance rules that all companies must follow to ensure that their citizens' data collection is consensual, private, and that data collection is only used for specified reasons. The EU and GDPR have seen great success in keeping consumers safe from predatory data practices.
The EU still has concerns over TikTok's usage of EU citizens' data and is actively investigating the social media company. However, the general consensus is because of the GDPR TikTok has been much more transparent and responsible with European data than American data; demonstrating the power of legislating consumer protection laws. TikTok isn’t the only social media that the GDPR has protected its citizens’ data.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is partially responsible for the birth of the GDPR. Meta, in 2018 repeatedly allowed the breaching of European data and failed to alert the victims. After reporting this irresponsible handling of private data, widespread support for accountability led to the GDPR fining Meta millions of dollars and sending a strong message to tech companies operating in Europe. Since the fines, Meta has made huge strides in protecting the privacy and data of Europeans.
So why aren’t Americans getting the same protection?
Basically, American legislators benefit from a combination of campaign donations by tech giants and the exploitation of our information. According to OpenSecrets, Meta has donated millions of dollars to campaigns on both sides of the aisles in 2022 alone. That is not mentioning campaign donations from either Google or Twitter parent companies; both are big collectors of American data. Our politicians refuse to regulate big tech because they work for big tech.
Also, political campaigns use data harvested on Americans by tech companies for their targeted political ads. Tiktok and Twitter refused to allow political campaigns to do targeted ads on their site in 2022 but Meta did. Meta collects our data and then sells it to political candidates to target specific American demographics during elections to influence their politics. Government influence on private citizens is bad whether it’s domestic or international countries. I’m not more at peace knowing that Trump or Biden are exploiting my data instead of Xi Jinping.
Not to mention Meta was directly used by foreign governments in 2016 to influence American citizens during the presidential election. Facebook allowed Russian-backed Facebook political posts to reach 126 million Americans during a political election. This was all revealed during the revolution of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Scandal where Facebook illegally collected data from millions of American Facebook profiles and sold the information to a foreign company.
Facebook’s actions reflect the exact concerns that are being voiced about TikTok right now, yet there was not any legislation introduced to ban Meta and specifically Facebook. We have already talked about how Congress benefits from Meta (Facebook) exploiting Americans’ data in more than one way and how Facebook openly worked with foreign actors to influence Americans. Is that enough to explain the difference in treatment between the two companies?
TikTok vs. Meta
I think the biggest difference between how TikTok is treated versus Meta comes from the demographic. Meta owns Instagram and Facebook, while Instagram and TikTok appeal to a similar demographic; Facebook appeals to older generations. Facebook users have more money and more political capital, therefore giving Meta more leveraging power with politicians. Meta owns politicians on three fronts: Meta gives them money to get re-elected, Meta allows politicians to use Facebook data to influence potential voters, and Meta is popular with their constituents.
Also, Meta has the most to gain with TikTok being banned in America. This isn’t some fringe conspiracy theory. Meta’s stock jumped when Congress introduced legislation to ban TikTok. TikTok is also the number one competitor to Meta’s Instagram with teenagers flocking to TikTok. Obviously, with Congress's lack of response to Facebook working with foreign actors, legislators don’t care too deeply about American citizens’ privacy and protection from influence.
What I think also needs to be mentioned is TikTok importance in the midterm. TikTok allowed a lot of young people to become politicized and vote for policies that will actually benefit them. The British Broadcasting Chanel theorized that TikTok’s presence with Gen-Z is what tipped the midterms. Maybe older politicians and their benefactors are scared of the potential power that TikTok holds in politicizing young people.
Please don’t mistake my argument as we should not worry about China’s access to American data. My argument is that we need to be wary of every actor's access to our private data, including our own government’s. If Congress wanted to protect our data from everyone, including themselves; Congress could pass an EU-style General Data Protection Regulation law but Congress has allowed private companies and foreign actors to exploit us for many years.
My argument is that we should be skeptical about why Congress cares about protecting American data when it specifically applies to TikTok.
