Stop Coping About TikTok

It's proving that it deserves the ban

The TikTok ban is coming, and TikTok’s user base is doing a speed run of the five stages of grief.

There’s been a great deal of denial ever since the ban passed Congress. Many users are insisting the ban won’t actually happen, believing that the Supreme Court will save them. But Court watchers think that the justices’ questions indicate they’re unlikely to overturn the ban. Prediction markets agree - odds for a ban have fluctuated between 65-75% in the last few days.

Maybe something surprising will happen - as of publication time, the decision from the Supreme Court hasn’t been announced. But the signs aren’t good for TikTok.

Anger about the ban is everywhere. Anger’s been everywhere since TikTok encouraged a mass of teenagers to overwhelm Congressional offices with phone calls about how they’d kill themselves if TikTok was banned:

Now we’re in the bargaining phase, and it’s been interesting. Some users are migrating to other Chinese apps as a middle finger to the US government. Red Note (also known as ‘Little Red Book’ or Xiaohongshu) rose to the #1 position on the App Store and fellow Chinese social app Lemon8 was #2. The flood of new English speaking users is creating some very funny moments, like Chinese netizens asking English speakers to do their homework for them. But it’s also emblematic of the entire reason TikTok is being banned, which we’ll get to in a minute.

As the day of reckoning draws approaches, we’re doing to see more of the final stages, depression and acceptance. But until then it’s worth revisiting one more time why this is happening and why TikTok is proving the case against them with their own actions.

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Remember the ‘anger’ stage from above? Here’s one of the best examples:

@soupytimeget angry

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I love this video, but not for the reasons creator Soupytime intended. Soupy’s rant about the TikTok ban has been shared widely across the web, and it’s emblematic of TikTok in general. There’s no specific argument other than vaguely conspiratorial vibes. There’s a wild misunderstanding of what terms like ‘free speech’ and ‘fascism’ mean. There’s no facts or data or hard evidence presented. The video is laced with the pseudo-intellectualism of a college freshman who just got high for the first time. Soupy doesn’t actually understand what’s happening, but social media incentivizes her to be righteously angry about it. And because we’re all addicted to being outraged the video went viral.

The actual argument for banning TikTok has always been about national security. China under Xi Jinping’s rule is a totalitarian nightmare state. It is still actively genociding minority populations, it crushes dissent and human rights, and it’s America’s geopolitical enemy. It would be absolutely insane to allow the CCP to control one of the most important information channels in our country, which TikTok unfortunately is.

Some people conflate this as just being about ‘data’, but that’s wrong. Data privacy is a concern, but the larger concern is about control of the algorithm and control of what hundreds of millions of people see. During the Cold War, we wouldn’t have dreamed of letting the USSR control NBC, directing whatever propaganda they wanted into American households. Why would we let the CCP control one of the largest social media sites today? It’s shocking how few people address this, even those arguing directly against the ban. You’re more likely to see a direct acknowledgement that it happens. “I know China is influencing me or spying on me, but that’s better than Mark Zuckerberg!”

No, you enormous dipshit, it is not. There are a lot of reasons to dislike or distrust Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, etc. Despite those reasons, none of them are in the same universe as the CCP when it comes to being evil. Giving China algorithmic control over one of the most important media channels in our country is insane. We know that TikTok is not independent. TikTok has spied on journalists, banned users critical of China, algorithmically de-ranked topics sensitive to the CCP, and repeatedly given American user data to China. Ex-employees have directly reported that TikTok pushes pro-China narratives. Nobody likes Congress, but after receiving classified briefings on TikTok the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 50-0 to advance the ban. Fifty to zero. That kind of bipartisanship without a single dissenting vote is rare.

It really isn’t in question that TikTok is beholden to the CCP and that they’re already using their power to influence public opinion.

The main argument against the ban focuses on free speech, which is hilarious given that TikTok is the app teaching Gen Z that you need to say ‘unalived’ instead of killed. It’s also intensely hypocritical given that TikTok actively censors CCP-sensitive topics and that China bans all Western social media.

But the free speech argument is bullshit even aside from the hypocrisy. Congress is more than happy for TikTok to exist in all its braindead glory as long as someone other than the CCP controls it. There’s speculation Elon Musk wants to buy it,¹ which would be horrifying on several levels but also destroys the free speech argument. Nobody is censoring your speech by banning TikTok. They’re just saying that America’s largest communications platforms can’t be owned by our geopolitical enemies. The CCP does not have a First Amendment right to own TikTok.

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So what’s really going on?

Arguably one of the most dangerous uses of social media by both foreign and domestic actors has been to convince an entire generational cohort that the US government is literally Satan while other governments have only friendly intentions. This knee-jerk anti-Americanism is spread by the alt-right, by the far left, and by the foreign governments that benefit from extremist political discourse in America. It’s why such a sizable pro-Russia contingent² exists online when Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a fairly uncomplicated good vs evil situation. It’s why people can say with a straight face that Mark Zuckerberg is equal to or worse than a genocidal dictatorship. It’s why so many Zoomers assume the US government is at all times deliberately trying to ruin their lives, while China is just a cute lil guy who wants to be friends. If Xi Jinping invaded Hawaii next week there would undoubtedly be a contingent of young people who would embrace Xi Jinping Thought and say that the US deserved it.

This anti-US-at-all-times stance isn’t universal, but it’s incredibly widespread for how stupid it is. If you think I’m exaggerating I invite you to explore the depths of pro-North Korea, pro-Assad and pro-Iranian regime discourse. There are people out there defending Pol Pot. Reflexive America-Bad-ism is a scourge and Gen Z has been one-shotted by the algorithms.

It doesn’t help that an entire legion of online commentators are eagerly distributing the propaganda. Taylor Lorenz, a reporter who was forced out of the Washington Post because she called Joe Biden a war criminal, had this to say about the murderous Chinese regime:

Joe Biden? Monstrous war criminal. Xi Jinping? Just a friendly guy, long live China. Welcome to the TikTokization of online politics.

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It’s ironic that ByteDance, by refusing to sell TikTok, has proven the case against it. TikTok is an enormously valuable company worth between 50-100 billion dollars depending on who you ask. But ByteDance has resolutely refused to sell, and has instead stated they’re just going to shut down the app in the US come January 19th. This stance was only ever rational as a bluff for the purposes of political pressure. No freely acting company would turn down 50 billion dollars, even if they think the sale was forced unjustly. The only conceivable reason ByteDance would still refuse to sell is that the Chinese government won’t let them. The CCP would rather have the propaganda value of TikTok than billions and billions of dollars. Grindr was forced to divest itself of Chinese ownership in 2020 and did it without much fuss. The only reason this is different is that the CCP knows TikTok is a valuable propaganda tool.

I’m highly skeptical that RedNote/xiaohongshu or Lemon8 will have any staying power as social apps in the US. There are too many obstacles. They’re starting from essentially zero in trying to attract American users. The language barrier is an obvious problem. But these apps are also openly censorious in ways that US apps just are not. Forget trying to talk about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square or the Uyghur genocide - you can’t even show cleavage or mention LGBT content on RedNote without getting banned. RedNote doesn’t even have the fig leaf of supposedly being free of CCP control, it’s just openly controlled by the party. Hell, depending on how you translate it, it’s literally named “Little Red Book”!

Instead, virtually all of the users will migrate to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts in quick fashion. Other sites are also making a play - Substack is offering $25,000 for creators who bring new traffic, Snapchat and Twitter are courting TikTok refugees, and a legion of smaller apps are hoping to break out. But Meta and Alphabet are the real winners here.

All that’s left is the cope. Both ByteDance and their users have proven in the last few weeks exactly why it’s so dangerous to give a totalitarian state control of your information channels. People will spend the next week flipping out, but absent a last-minute deal where someone buys TikTok the ban is happening. I don’t love strengthening two already gigantic social media behemoths. But it’s preferable to having the CCP own TikTok.

1. Seems unlikely - prediction markets have it at less than 10% probability.

2. We’ve covered Russian disinformation operations in more detail here.