2024 03 15

Rural Illinois farmland. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

On Banning TikTok

I’m not aiming to make this a news commentary blog with quick takes on current events, but let me take a few moments to jot down some thoughts on this possible TikTok ban legislation currently in the news: 

There’s an evolving summary of America I have in my head that is essentially boiled down to this: America will (more or less) let you do whatever you want unless you fuck with America—then America will kill you.

One of my complaints with America boils down to the killing portion of this summary, in the sense that I think we should be doing less of it. Killing people to solve our problems never seems to work, yet we go back to this game plan repeatedly for reasons I’ve yet to fully understand. Our current misguided killing, being done through our friends in Israel, has grown wildly unpopular in no small part due to the efforts of the fine folks behind TikTok. 

You’d maybe think that, for this reason, I’d be against the banning of TikTok but you’d be wrong. I’ve been in favor of TikTok regulations for what seems like an eternity now; Since before Trump was in favor of banning it, before he “changed his mind” and decided he doesn’t care so much after all.

Part of the problem is how we are discussing the topic as a ban. Scott Galloway put it well by saying we don’t consider 65 mile per hour speed limit signs as the banning of cars, we think of them as a safety regulation on driving, which is exactly how we should talk about implementing new restraints on social media apps (be it foreign-owned names like TikTok or domestic products). Calling it a ban sounds unnecessarily extreme, especially in this time of extreme actions, when having resources to freely vent our frustrations is as important as ever.

That said, it’s the foreign-owned aspect of this issue that is what’s going to lead to this so-called ban on TikTok. Lawmakers were supposedly inundated with calls from frustrated kids who were prompted and connected by their TikTok app in an effort to stop this legislation. Ordinarily, this would be standard operating procedure in our so-called democracy, however, it’s now being seen as the weaponizing of our youth by a foreign power in which we have no control. This, coinciding with the turning of the narrative against our stupid war is what has lawmakers fed up; Turning the social network into an echo chamber of discontent aimed directly at the United States by a foreign interest with a different viewpoint. America is being fucked with!

But how is this justification to outright ban a foreign company—just because you don’t like how they are shining a light on your shady dealings?! Well, my beef with TikTok is more due to unfair business practices (China does not allow US companies to operate within China yet expects us to allow them to operate here) and with social media toxicity generally. I don’t think we should be allowing our youth to use consequence-free, unregulated social media as we do, but since we’re a “free country” and lawmakers shrug their shoulders at the idea of implementing any sort of protection in this regard, we should at the very least ensure these companies, whom we’re allowing to raise our children, are not run by uncooperative foreign actors with motives fully unknown to us. That it takes a shitty war largely of our making is an unfortunate means to an end, I fully agree.

Damn. This took entirely too long to write, still comes off as generally vague and unconvincing, and therefore is why I don’t write commentary on news. Anyway, to distill my thoughts even further, I will say this: I think TikTok should be regulated, as I think all social media companies should have better oversight and far more accountability. I don’t think this country should allow foreign access to our markets without at least some level of reciprocity. The world is an increasingly-complicated-and-increasingly-connected place and the people who control the algorithms have as much power as the people who control the guns. TikTok isn’t going away, there’s too much money at stake, but US leadership has finally seen the light on how vital control of the world’s most popular social network is to the operation of the American Machine, and that is why they will somehow, someway, wrestle away enough control of it to better sleep at night.

And I’m going back to making photos while thinking less about messy geopolitical social media attention wars that are really about money, power, and control of the people.

🎵tiktok chime🎵

-Clayton