TikTok Turmoil
Some of you may have heard that the House voted to ban TikTok. It now goes to the Senate, and if it passes there, to the President.
I will admit, I don’t understand some of the finer points involved in this fracas. As someone who stepped into the World Wide Web as an adult, I knew that this particular form of media would save everything. If I put it onto the web, into an email, on a video, then it would be saved forever. I instilled this knowledge in my children, though I have been somewhat less successful in making them understand it. For them, there has ALWAYS been an World Wide Web. Regardless, I know that if it’s online, then people have access to it. That’s why I don’t store credit card info or personal information online. So how is TikTok any different than other social media?
After talking with people who are more “in the know” than myself, I believe that the only real difference is that it’s China holding onto the information. It was pointed out to me that if anyone with a security clearance has TikTok, then it’s possible for the Chinese to put two and two together to make classified documents. That seems like a fairly reasonable reason to keep TikTok out of government and military offices… but then again, I can’t think of a reason why a General or a military scientist would be indulging in TikTok on base anyhow. Still, that doesn’t mean the general public should have their toy taken away.
The information that TikTok contains in its gizzards is available from many places. While it may not be as easy to pull the pieces together, it’s still all there. If it’s online at all, then everyone has at least potential access to it. This is why I don’t have a problem using Temu. I know that the information being gathered by Temu is much the same as the information being gathered by Amazon and other places. If China really wants to sift through 170 million users’ worth of information, mining for a gold nugget, then let them. Maybe it’ll keep them too busy to do other obnoxious things.
More important than all of the above, though, is the knowledge that if TikTok is axed, then other social media platforms won’t be long in joining them. Whether it’s Truth Social, or X, or Facebook, someone will get their panties in a knot and court will happen, and the TikTok ban will be used as precedent. This is 100% a case of those unintended consequences we often talk about. Republicans need to NOT shoot themselves (and the rest of the country, thank-you-very-much) in the foot by passing this along. The American people, in droves, have decided they like TikTok. I happen to like it myself, though that’s not germane to this discussion. If our government “takes it away,” there very well might be hell to pay, and there absolutely will be unintended consequences galore.