It is an irresistible twist in the Trump administration’s four-year diplomatic spate with Beijing and comes hot from Trump pushing other countries to take a harder line on China.
Critics, however, worry that Trump’s latest attempt to screw up China could set a dangerous, anti-democratic precedent in how governments try to control the way citizens use the Internet, which will be applauded by leaders of countries where democracy is already declining.
“Restricting the Internet and interfering with the capacity of people to criticize power is not uncommon on a global scale. It has happened in India, Iran and in various parts of Africa,” said Nanjala Nyabola, an author and political analyst specializing in politics. digital age. “What people are struggling with is the fact that it’s happening in the US. When a country like the US starts eroding the ideas of democracy, it obviously opens the door for other countries to do the same.”
This may at first glance seem like a dramatic analysis, given the comparison in Iran and Africa, where people are arrested for expressing dissent online. All Trump is talking about is removing certain platforms from the American Internet.
It is the fact that this is happening in the Democratic poster child that makes Trump’s movement so notable. “Every time Western leaders engage in free speech and the movement of ideas across borders without good reason, the cause of civil liberties is undermined,” said Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham. “It makes it a little easier for governments trying on social media – in Iran, in Turkey, in Tanzania – to cut off critical votes.”
Whether Trump has no good reason, as Cheeseman puts it, to exclude TikTok is open to debate. TikTok is owned by a private Chinese company called ByteDance. TikTok itself does not operate in China and, in the case of the US, TikTok maintains that user data is stored on servers in the US.
They fear that the platform could be used to spread misinformation in the US. And, finally, they believe that the term private enterprise is relative in China, the autocratic superpower that currently locks horns with America.
There is also some irony in the idea that the American jettison TikTok should behave off the internet in some respects like China, whose government is surely censoring what its citizens can do online. Some of the largest American tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, are banned in China.
“It is critical that every step is taken in accordance with democratic values … and are messages from within the framework of promoting a democratic information space – not just against authoritarian threats,” said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and senior colleague at the Marshall Fund for the United States. “It is critical that the US does not take steps that shut us down and create the sovereign information model that Beijing wants and that would weaken democracy.”
Nyabola is of the opinion that the TikTok debacle and the consequences it may have for American democracy should be considered in the context of Trump’s four years in office. “In the course of the Trump administration, things that were once taboo have become normalized. It has interfered with institutions such as the Attorney General’s Office in relation to investigations into the president. How that may look to countries those who want to remain silent to shut down government critics are worried. ”
True to this form, Trump announced, even in his proclamations about TikTok, his very unusual opinion that if a deal were to be concluded between Microsoft and ByteDance, the US Treasury Department would have to receive a “substantial amount of money” for the deal.
“Whether it’s Microsoft if anyone else, or if it’s the Chinese – whatever the price, the United States would – should get a very large percentage of that price. Because we make it possible,” he said.
Given the fact that there is no obvious legal mechanism by which Trump could do this and there was no mention in the executive order, the fact is that he seems to think his government deserves a kickback for every deal.
“Trump’s call for the Treasury Department to take advantage of the sale of TikTok to Microsoft is the kind of thing that happens in failed states or banana republics, where clientelist schemes mean warlords or quasi-rulers get kickbacks from companies like tribute to allowing them to operate, ”said Joe Robinson, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge specializing in modern digital age.
The series on TikTok will no doubt resonate in the media. And however trivial the blocking of a social media platform may seem on the surface, it’s always worth remembering that when the president of the US does something, the world watches. Even if Trump gets his way and TikTok is banned, Cheeseman said the U.S. will still hand over a propaganda consolation prize to the Chinese government. “Blocking a foreign-owned platform for good reason would put the US on a par with China – the next time America complains about China’s wall of internet censorship, the Communist Party may turn around and say, ‘But we’re just doing the same thing. like you.”
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