Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
“U.S. lawmakers on Thursday battered TikTok's chief executive [Shou Zi Chew] about potential Chinese influence over the platform and said its short videos were damaging children's mental health, reflecting bipartisan concerns over the app's power over Americans… Some 20 U.S. senators - 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans - have backed bipartisan legislation giving President Joe Biden's administration a path to ban TikTok.” Reuters
The right calls for TikTok to be banned on both safety and national security grounds.
“In two deep dives on the platform during which she pretended to be a teen boy and teen girl, The Post’s Asia Grace found TikTok to be a parent’s worst nightmare. Log on as a 14-year-old girl? Get bombarded with content glorifying violence and sex (including tips on life from sex-trafficking misogynist Andrew Tate). And that’s to say nothing of the minutely detailed ‘how to’ guides on college-style binge drinking, including around a jug-chugging trend that sent tons of kids to the ER at UMass recently…
“For young boys, the view is just as grim. As ‘Jayden,’ Grace got served up an unending stream of ‘girls lip-syncing and twerking in mini-shorts’ followed by videos making light of violence towards women, proffering rape humor and racial hatred. Tate figured prominently there too, with a clip showing his laughter about Muslim women being stoned; others offered similar ugliness around male-female relations… This toxic content is only going to spread ever-wider, unless action is taken.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
“No matter how strenuously Chew pleads independence from the Chinese government, he and his company are bound by China’s National Intelligence Law, which compels every Chinese citizen and company to surrender all data to the Chinese Communist Party upon request and perform surveillance activities on behalf of the CCP. Chew has no choice in the matter. Neither do TikTok’s Chinese employees…
“A recent BuzzFeed report, citing leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings, revealed that ‘Everything is seen in China.’ TikTok tracks users’ keystrokes to capture their personal data, such as credit card information, passwords, and location… FBI Director Christopher Wray said the CCP controls TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, ‘allows them [Chinese Communist Party] to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.’…
“Anything short of a total ban won’t work. Proposals, such as storing Americans’ data collected by TikTok in the United States, are unrealistic. A determined adversary with no regard for the rule of law, like the CCP, will not be deterred by legalistic technicalities. Beijing will undoubtedly exert leverage over TikTok’s Chinese developers to place a backdoor in the millions of lines of code that Chinese hackers can exploit later to access U.S. data.”
Michelle Giuda, The Hill
“One unnamed Democratic consultant said it would be ‘politically insane’ to ban TikTok and still expect to ‘turn out young voters.’… It was just a few short years ago that Democratic politicians were retailing the notion that foreign influence operations aimed at undermining internal social cohesion were a grave threat to the stability of the republic. At least, they were when it was Russia doing the influencing. Now, we’re supposed to balance the national-security threat posed by apps like TikTok against Democratic strategists’ desire to post 20-second videos of politicians doing trendy dances? Talk about ‘politically insane.’”
Noah Rothman, National Review
The left generally opposes banning TikTok, instead arguing for comprehensive privacy and safety regulations.
The left generally opposes banning TikTok, instead arguing for comprehensive privacy and safety regulations.
“On TikTok, you're more likely to encounter firsthand accounts of news stories than a fact-checked and polished video from a legacy news company. This bottom-up ecosystem has its drawbacks, notably the proliferation of misinformation, hate speech, and harassment. But it also allows for voices previously excluded from the media to reach unprecedented audiences…
“In June of 2020, TikTok became a hub for Black Lives Matter protests. Videos from the front lines of protests flooded users' feeds. We could see the violence, the comradery, the strategies used in cities around the world. And we could organize…
“The U.S. is at a crossroads. We could dismantle a massive piece of communications infrastructure used by young people, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color, exacerbating existing inequalities in information access. Or alternatively, Congress could implement legislation that serves to protect the digital privacy and safety of all Americans on all platforms.”
Abbie Richards, Newsweek
“TikTok is only one chess piece in the global struggle to gather and control information… China’s intelligence services have a long history of being accused of stealing massive databases from companies including Equifax, Anthem and Marriott, and even the clearance records of millions of government employees from the Office of Personnel Management…
“It’s time for Congress to finally pass a comprehensive privacy law. With state privacy laws popping up across the US, creating chaos for American companies without addressing some fundamental issues, now is the time for Congress and President Biden to create predictable rules and take back leadership in tech regulation. And in doing so, Congress can explicitly define the kinds of critical data that can be stored or accessed in the US, in our democratic allies, in neutral countries and in our adversaries.”
Alex Stamos, CNN
“It is true, for instance, that China’s national security law would require the company to turn over information about its users to the government if ordered to do so, and that employees there have accessed U.S. user data. But it’s also true that the United States’ lack of a federal privacy law means most data with potential value to an adversary is already available for purchase on the Internet from a broker…
“[And] while election manipulation is a serious matter, research on Russia’s 2016 interference efforts suggests that orchestrating a TikTok conspiracy might not prove all that effective compared to, say, hacking and leaking legitimate documents… Cutting off a service that 150 million people in this country use, whether to watch lip-syncing videos, hype their small businesses or share news, might look like a blow to China in the short run. Yet it would be a victory for that country’s philosophy of techno-nationalism and a defeat for an open world and open web.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
