To me, the story was never about even about the hypothetical "they could pull some strings and somehow get every 17-year-old in the US swearing fealty to Chairman Xi." If nothing else, do you really want to focus your political infleunce campaign on demographics known for being low-political-activity and with relatively low disposable income the best choice?
It was about the fact that a firm which is foreign and unsympathetic captured lightning in a bottle: they became the cool platform for a new generation. Why bother trying to figure out why the platform that Mom uses to share AI-generated Trump spam with Aunt Bertha is no longer drawing the 14-year-olds when you can just rattle some sabres in Congress and get them to shut the competition down for you?
If we're so terrified that TikTok can blast a candidate into office, we should be equally concerned that Rumble or Twitter could too. If your media is that powerful, it's dangerous wherever the nominal mailing address of the firm is. Taking potshots at single firms or specific ownership strategies just means the next one will take a slightly different form and dispense slightly different hazards.
The only way to actually regain control is to boost media literacy. TikTok can be part of a balanced media diet, but are we teaching kids "Compare what the BBC and Tass say, and the truth is probably in the middle?"
>If we're so terrified that TikTok can blast a candidate into office, we should be equally concerned that Rumble or Twitter could too
I'm seeing a lot of attempts to render Tiktok as interchangeable to any number of other examples in order to pose a dilemma about logical equivalences. I just don't think these withstand factual scrutiny. Rumble is not at the scale or engagement of Tiktok and Twitter does not have ties to a major competitive state actor.
You can see how it's meaningfully differentiated if you want to. If you don't want to, you attempt to restate the terms on which the comparison happens to make it look for fuzzy, so everything looks the same.
To be blunt, "the richest man in the world" is equally as dangerous as a "competitive state actor".
He has direct motive to influence the operations of the American state, the resources to amplify his messages, and has control of a platform that's mainstreamed in a way that gives it a broader reach than TikTok ever had.
Saying he's an American entity is barely meaningful. When you're that rich, you can probably pull in five new passports given 48 hours notice, so the one you carry at any given point is largely a flag of convenience.
Blaming China is a cheat code for the current political climate. See the Huawei fiasco: No level of audits, disclosures, or actual technical evidence about security would satisfy-- It Is Foreign So It Is Evil. So I'm sure that the hype against TikTok was fanned in part by their competitors who saw an opportunity.
It was about the fact that a firm which is foreign and unsympathetic captured lightning in a bottle: they became the cool platform for a new generation. Why bother trying to figure out why the platform that Mom uses to share AI-generated Trump spam with Aunt Bertha is no longer drawing the 14-year-olds when you can just rattle some sabres in Congress and get them to shut the competition down for you?
If we're so terrified that TikTok can blast a candidate into office, we should be equally concerned that Rumble or Twitter could too. If your media is that powerful, it's dangerous wherever the nominal mailing address of the firm is. Taking potshots at single firms or specific ownership strategies just means the next one will take a slightly different form and dispense slightly different hazards.
The only way to actually regain control is to boost media literacy. TikTok can be part of a balanced media diet, but are we teaching kids "Compare what the BBC and Tass say, and the truth is probably in the middle?"