Legislators in the US are apparently competing to see who can be the fiercest opponent of social media. In mid-March, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a law that would force Chinese company ByteDance to sell videosharing platform TikTok to an American firm, or another company not based in an “adversary nation”. In late April, the Senate approved the bill. Should ByteDance fail to act accordingly, a platform with 170m US users might suddenly become inaccessible.
This does not yet constitute a TikTok ban. Alengthy appeals process could follow. But the proposed prohibition has been surprisingly popular. By the time you read this, Joe Biden will probably have signed the legislation, though Donald Trump now opposes a ban, with speculation that this is because Biden has begun taking fire on the platform from progressive youth opposed to his inaction on Gaza.
It’s not hard to spot the contradictions when a country that celebrates free markets and free expression is demanding the forced sale or wholesale ban of a platform. Indeed, a blanket ban would put the US in the company of increasingly authoritarian India, which has outlawed TikTok on grounds of national sovereignty, and Afghanistan, which has banned the platform for being anti-Islamic. The argument that TikTok represents a national security risk is more theoretical than practical. Yes, TikTok’s powerful algorithms have the potential to influence public opinion, but there is a distinct lack of evidence for any concerted attempt at manipulation. Government officials worry that China could spy on users’ activities or movements, but TikTok collects more or less the same data as, say, Facebook. Countering this behaviour through an applicationspecific ban makes a lot less sense than passing comprehensive privacy legislation. It is possible to take on some of the serious concerns about TikTok—its addictiveness, its possible adverse effects on young people—in far less radical ways. Yet the US seems to be on a banning spree. States including Florida, Louisiana and Utah have passed legislation to block users under 16 from using social media without parental permission. Civil rights groups have pointed out that these bans are harmful to LGBT+ youth who may find support in digital communities, and also affect young people’s ability to organise and protest online. Some of these restrictions may become national in scope. The most serious of these efforts is “KOSA”—the Kids Online Safety Act—which has bipartisan support, and would demand that platforms actively work to prevent young people from encountering content that could be exploitative or detrimental to mental health.
Even longterm internet boosters like myself have trouble defending social media companies