The TikTok Quandary

Diversion

With all of the focus surrounding social media centering on Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter or Mark Zuckerberg being demanded by the FBI and the federal government to censor “Misinformation,” it appears the much larger threat to national security comes from the social media app, TikTok.

FCC

Last week, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner came out and said, “The U.S. government should ban TikTok rather than come to a national security agreement with the social media app that might allow it to continue operating in the United States.” With tens of millions of active TikTok users in the United States, it begs the question as to why U.S. officials are calling for a ban and if this is just more government overreach or a legitimate threat to national security.

ByteDance

TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, one of China’s most valuable private companies at a conservative valuation estimated to be near $300 Billion. The concerns surrounding the app center around the data harvesting of its U.S. and European users used for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party. According to the FCC commissioner, “TikTok is not just another video app, that’s the sheep’s clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data that the new Reports show are being accessed in Beijing.” According to a recent report from The Hill, “Many cybersecurity experts believe the CCP intends TikTok as a propaganda or censorship tool to somehow blackmail users.”

Private Eyes

In July, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew admitted, “Employees outside of the U.S., including China-based employees, can have access to TikTok U.S. user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by our U.S.-based security team.” This statement follows a $92 million dollar settlement between ByteDance and the state of Illinois for allegedly violating biometric privacy laws. The claim made by TikTok is that the user data is used to run targeted ads and provide a more personalized user experience however this is not what a recent Forbes report claims. “Material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance’s internal audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes.”

Subversion

While all social media apps collect and store data for algorithm usage, including U.S.-based platforms, TikTok is unique in that they are based out of China, and China openly inserts itself into all matters of “Private” business. While our media continues to act as if the greatest threat to American democracy is either “White-Nationalism” or Vladimir Putin, the actual serious threat comes from China. China is much more cerebral in its attempts to undermine the U.S., rather than engaging in a physical war, they instead subvert, sliding underneath the radar. In recent years they’ve engaged in a strategy that seeks to use our free markets and corporate greed against us by investing in U.S. companies to take control of industries and buying up U.S. land. Although greed is a product of human nature and exists in every economic system including that of communist China, our corporations are making Faustian pacts by taking red money in exchange for the subversion of power that China seeks to attain. China’s approach to economics and politics is a hybrid approach by applying free market principles with the state-controlled elements of political and economic communism. While the Chinese Communist Party does indeed have a private business, they have implemented laws that mix in the communist principle of top-down control of the economy. According to the Guardian, the implemented 2017 Chinese National Intelligence law states, “Any organisation and citizen shall support and cooperate in national intelligence work.” The government has gone as far as forcing CCP officials inside of private businesses as part of their “Mixed-Ownership Reform” which puts authority and control of the business in the hands of the communist party. No actions of major private businesses happen without permission and allowance from the CCP. What this means is that while yes, technically TikTok is a private entity separate from that of the Chinese government, the parent company ByteDance is completely beholden to the CCP. Any and all data and information that the adversarial government seeks to attain through ByteDance will absolutely be handed over to them, or else.

Demographics & Usage

In the United States, there are currently 138 million active users of TikTok. 60% of the users are members of generation Z. As shown in the above graph, the largest demographic of users are aged between 10 and 19. According to The Hill, “Facebook is the main competitor and has been eclipsed by TikTok as the app users spend most of their time on at 850 minutes per month.” According to Influencer Marketing Hub, TikTok has the “Highest engagement rate per post of any social media. Boasts over 1 Billion monthly active users. 61% of users are women. And 80% of its revenue comes from China.” So what we know about the TikTok demographic is very clear, it is young people, primarily girls, that use the app and they use it often. According to Google, “Nearly half of Gen Z use TikTok and Instagram for search instead of google.” According to Pew Research, “33% of TikTok users say they regularly get their news from the app.” Claims made against the CCP and TikTok is that the app is being used to harvest personal data for the use of future weaponization while simultaneously attempting to subvert the minds of our youth, pushing ideology that benefits our opposition and is antithetical to our own American interests. This makes me think of a quote from Malcolm X, “Only a fool would let their enemy teach their children,” the idea that the source of information for our youth is increasingly becoming our adversary.

Quandary

The quandary and the moral dilemma come into play when you ask yourself, “What should we do?” Out of principle, I am against governmental meddling in matters of private business, I believe almost every single economic disaster lies at the feet of government intervention and gets falsely attributed to “Capitalism.”  For the federal government to step in and ban TikTok is precisely government intervention in private affairs. I think one of the more dangerous threats posed in our society today is the insatiable appetite the government seems to have for monitoring and censoring online speech that they label, “Mis” or “Dis” information. Those terms have become not objectively false information but instead information that runs counter-narrative to that put out by the government and their pawns, the media. In a healthy society, journalism is investigative reporting that seeks, finds, and reports on the misuse of power. The media as an institution is supposed to be an entity that checks the power of the powerful on behalf of the people. We are obviously far from this mission and there is very little authentic journalism that exists in the mainstream today. However, what this TikTok scenario involves is something much different, it represents a unique threat to national security. It is not about TikTok but instead, it is about where 80% of their revenue comes from and who has complete control of the company. China has made no uncertain claims that its goal is to usher in an age of global Chinese communism, one where freedom of choice no longer exists and the all-powerful state controls and monitors every aspect of our lives. This vision of global dominance is not one that co-exists with the values of a free-western society, western-society must fall for this vision to come to fruition. Those that seek to hijack individual sovereignty to be replaced by state control are the enemy of the people. While TikTok presents itself as a fun and entertaining platform, what it represents is the opening of the gate allowing the fox to enter the hen house.