The timing of the possible Donald Trump TikTok ban is very disturbing. TikTok has been around for a while and the same privacy concerns always existed in China.
However, the administration didn’t publicly mention the app ban until the Black Lives Matter movement exploded on TikTok, and Facebook announced its plan to unveil a new TikTok copycat app called Reels, which will launch in August.
“Reels was designed to directly challenge the growing dominance of TikTok,” said Sarah Perez of TechCrunch. “In a new area in the Instagram app, Reels allows users to create and post 15-second short videos with music or other audio, similar to TikTok.”
Trump can wait to ban TikTok once the Facebook app is announced and hand over even more power to the social media company that failed to moderate the violent and hurtful posts (white nationalism) that helped Trump get elected.
Basically, Facebook would have a monopoly on the world’s largest social media apps: Instagram, Facebook, and Reels (basically TikTok).
Having a monopoly on social media is a scary idea. Facebook is already a terrifying company. Therefore, it is setting a precedent that will allow the United States government to censor Internet content by banning TikTok.
Samm Sacks, principal investigator of cyber security policies at Yale Law School, believes that, through Vox Media, banning the TikTok application would be “an important step for the US government to control how it Americans use the Internet, which is ironically a step toward Beijing’s cyber sovereignty itself, the same thing we’ve been criticizing for years. ”
TikTok’s privacy and censorship concerns are fair, but let’s take a look at both sides of the debate
While Facebook may have a lot to gain from the possible TikTok ban and the Black Lives Matter movement might have something to lose, let’s take a look at both sides of the TikTok debate because it’s a nuance.
Why should TikTok be removed?
- Data collection
- aids in artificial intelligence software that helps China beat America in the race to artificial intelligence
- Large-scale data collection can be used to influence people’s behavior and influence elections or political feelings.
- See how Facebook helped Cambridge Analytica help Donald Trump win the 2016 election
- “Our report that a political firm hired by the Trump campaign acquired access to the private data of millions of Facebook users has raised new questions about how the social media giant protects user information.” – New York Times
- What does TikTok collect?
- From the BBC:
- what videos are seen, commented
- location data
- phone model and operating system
- keystroke rhythms that people exhibit
- reads copy and paste clipboard
- “Much of the overall TikTok collection is comparable to other data-hungry social networks like Facebook.”
- Influence the conversation in the app
- The Chinese government could promote certain movements that are favorable to the Chinese government or any other political agenda and influence people (if they have enforcement influence)
- But let’s not act like bad information doesn’t spread like wildfire on Facebook too
- Censorship
- The Chinese government’s influence on ByteDance, owner of TikTok, is unclear.
- China has already been caught trying to spread disinformation on social media – the New York Times provides more information here
Why shouldn’t TikTok be removed?
- Sets a bad precedent for censorship on social media
- What applications in the future will be banned? Who will ban those apps in the future?
- Limit the voices of the younger generation, including progressive voices and minority voices, as TikTok is a younger audience.
- China can already hack people’s information if they want
- “I think the data privacy problem is a little bit complicated,” says Jordan Schneider, host of the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter. “The Chinese government has many more shocking ways to obtain blackmail or corporate secrets or simply general information about individual American citizens.” – Vox Media
- While the app could help China collect data to build artificial intelligence, banning the app could adversely affect the ability of the United States to access international data, which in turn would limit the ability of the United States to build software. successful artificial intelligence
- If the United States bans TikTok, then you could imagine a scenario where many other United States social media apps are banned in other countries, limiting the United States’ ability to collect data and build better artificial intelligence.
- Banning the app is an excuse for not finding a data privacy solution that works not only for TikTok, but also for other American tech giants like Facebook who abuse user data
- Let’s not pretend that TikTok will be the latest controversy on social media.
- Find a way to make TikTok safe so that it not only solves this situation, but also future problems. It is best to find a solution that does not involve the ban because it sets a terrifying precedent
- TikTok says the data is kept separate from Chinese influence (but they wouldn’t tell us that the Chinese government would be spying on the app if it were)
DISCUSSION: Should TikTok be banned in the United States? by r / MeidasTouch
About Ryan Lipton
Ryan is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and specializes in business journalism. He has previously written for SB Nation’s Silver and Black Pride, USA Today Sports Media Group, North Carolina Business News Wire, Daily Tar Heel, and has worked with the Ice Cube BIG3 basketball league. Ryan is also a regular contributor to MeidasTouch.com
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