I think the biggest thing is that people are bummed because TikTok is literally a good app, it works well and a lot of people enjoyed it during Covid for entertainment. Will another app capture that? Surely
That seems reasonable, and it'd be fine if TikTok sold to another owner. I'm especially sympathetic to people who built a large following there who are now screwed through no fault of their own.
It just doesn't override the obvious national security issues.
I've got to challenge the definition of TikTok as a "good app". It's essentially the distillation of all the worst things about engaging with the internet (encouraging unhealthy engagement, using negative affect to drive engagement, focusing on keeping people hooked above any pretense of other value). It's a sugar and caffeine dump straight to your brain's pleasure centers. It might be effective at what it's trying to do, but I would never say it's "good". People would enjoy it if companies were allowed to put heroin in their chicken nuggets (and would certainly buy a ton of them), but I wouldn't describe it as "good".
Like most social media apps, your opinion of it depends on what slice of it the algorithm bestows on you. Yes, there is a lot of stupid stuff but there is also a lot of regular people who are trying to do something to give a little more meaning to their lives. There’s a surprising amount of good music on it. Jacques Pepin inspires with simple, classic recipes. A chef with stage 4 cancer showing he’s still got it. The Brooklyn pizza place that is like stepping back in time. An enthusiastic young English trainspotter with who is both sharp and charmingly free of irony. The insanely hard-working Vietnamese woman who can build anything with local bamboo.
I know nothing about the national security aspects of TikTok but since China has been effectively hacking our intelligence, corporate and banking sectors for a while, I’m not sure that TikTok should be our highest priority. To be sure, I’d prefer if Americans read books instead of being on social media but that war was lost a couple of decades ago.
The app itself is explicitly trying to generate addition. That's the literal goal. Just because someone finds a way to put some meaningful content on it doesn't mean that the app isn't bad on balance. As a counterpoint, I'm sure there are a few garbage blogs here on Substack, but the format itself encourages deep exploration/discussion of a topic and robust discussion. The small negative group doesn't outweigh the structurally good design. The opposite is true of TikTok.
I genuinely agree with the main points of this article. I also don’t understand why our homegrown TikTok substitutes have been such poor quality. It’s just not close for I want to watch like vlog type content, pop music stuff and introducing we music.
Threads is limited by policy and you tube has a lot of problems of being fused with a long form video service.
It’s not to say we should step back but it seems like it’s going to be like just worse for reasons that are usually tangential to most people’s experience of the app.
Anyone who's ever dealt with an addict is familiar with everything we're seeing over the TikTok ban - this is simply demonstrating how many people are addicted to TikTok. They can use any other cover they want, but it's addict behavior, plain and simple.
Honestly - the memes and cultural hilarity of a bunch of Gen Z Americans getting on Rednote is worth the effort of banning tik tok. Can't wait to see how this ends
I'm in a rare position in disagreeing with you. But not on the premise, but rather on the context.
The *real* reason Congress decided to finally take action on TikTok was the aftermath of Oct 7.
TikTok lit up with footage and content that was incrediblly sensitive to the Gazan experience, which, in turn, created a massive sentiment against Israel.
This, in part, is what led to the college campus protest movement.
Anyone and everyone in the American Foreign Policy world saw this unfold and sold into their congregational colleagues that this kind of "propaganda" was literally undermining American foreign policy political salience.
Here's the thing: my hypothesis (by knowing many GenZers) is that TikTok was simply providing its users, as usual, what they wanted in their content feeds.
This was not a conspiracy. This was not CCP interference with American foreign policy. This is a new generation having their Vietnam Moment. And our politicians misdiagnosing the dynamics of how we got there.
Meta-point: I don't think it's ever a good idea to be predictive in policy. There is no evidence that China is (or would) use the feed to do anything but make their country look less awful). If/when they do step over a line (a line that we should legislate), then there would be consequences.
But our government should do everyone a favor and stop copying our adversaries who ban things as their move, and instead draw red lines about standards that must be met.
Also, does nobody see the law of unintended consequences of pushing China away and thinking so lowly of their national pride that "just sell it!" would ever make sense to them? Our desire to play their game their way is just not the America I grew up in. We were always the "bigger people" with more high-minded strategies to create incentive structures to have others comply with our desires. We architected win/win scenarios.
We never banned things. And when we tried to limit risk under the guise of national security (Japanese interment camps, McCarthyism), we embarrassed ourselves.
Regarding the "just sell it!" solution: Would we "just sell!" American success stories to another country because they didn't like that the company was based on America? No way, Jose. We'd rally around the "Made In America" slogan like the proud nationalists we are. Even as our own national security apparatus has been caught red handed tracking virtually everything happening online, and caught doing the same in allies' digital activity (see: Germany).
What we need to do is step back and develop an FDA-like process for rating the quality and safety of social applications. Inform people, don't tell them what they can and can't have.
The Internet created a version of the world where national borders are porous and almost irrelevant from an information perspective.
Barring a destruction of society and infrastructure, that genie isn't going back in the bottle.
It's time to acknowledge this and develop policies that reflect this reality.
Banning an app is the least sophisticated and least effective and least "American(tm)" strategy to address what our politicians really are scared of: our future leaders being ideologically captured by the oppressor/oppressed dynamic of politics.
"Also, does nobody see the law of unintended consequences of pushing China away and thinking so lowly of their national pride that "just sell it!" would ever make sense to them?"
See, this exactly the point I'm trying to make. Even TikTok defenders **admit the case against them is true**. The whole point is that it's not an independent company, it's controlled by the totalitarian Chinese government. And in your response, you frame it as ***China*** having too much national pride to sell. It's admitting that the CCP controls what happens, not the company! That's the point!
Additionally, the US forced a divestiture of Grindr from its Chinese owner in 2020 and nobody batted an eye. I wonder why it's different this time?
Actually, I disagree with this assessment. National Pride is a real thing that happens to all nations/societies/tribes/groups/etc. And I was not suggesting that the Chinese government, per se, would halt the sale over national pride. I'm suggesting ByteDance, being a Chinese company -- and presumably proud to be the first company to create a Chinese-owned social media phenomenon, would have just as much pride in "Made In China" as Boeing did with their first "Made in America" jetliner.
Further, I'd argue that an epistemic view of cultural bonds makes this axiomatic, not proving a point that the Chinese are up to no good with regards to TikTok.
To level-set, I am no China apologist. I'm quite aware that Xi has aims to harm America and our allies. It's literally in his platform. What is concerning is that we're using this fact as a cudgel to presumably falsely allege behaviors that simply haven't occurred (yet) in China's corporate sector.
Yes, China has a history of meddling with companies in China, so there is certainly reason for *concern.*
The law congress passed was not one based on "concern" - it was based on their (private, unreleased, unverifiable) claims of what China was actually doing.
This is the problem.
If/when China does put their thumb on the TikTok algo to drive their nationalistic aims against us, we'll a) most likely know it, fast, b) will have a much easier time dealing with it as a result, and c) have a real case for no country to trust China going forward, which is far more powerful than evidence-free fearmongering.
Sorry Jon, if you think China does not censor tiktok, try finding videos on Tiananmen Square, or Taiwan independence or China interference with free speech in Hong Kong or Uyghur suppression
Censorship is built into tiktok, from a 2024 study "By searching for four keywords—Uyghur, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Tiananmen—on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, the researchers found that TikTok's algorithm displayed a higher percentage of positive, neutral, or irrelevant content related to China's human rights abuses compared to both Instagram and YouTube."
I'm sure it's just coincidence or are Insta and yt users different?
Also, if the study your referencing is authored by the Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), then please note that their prior report on tiktok was heavily scrutinized. Further, the very nature and name of the organization reeks of mission bias.
Not to be snide, but, yes, every digital marker knows there are marked demographic differences amongst social media properties. These stats don't surprise me at all based on user makeup and (non-cirumspect) algorithmic intent.
I’m sympathetic to your point against predictive policymaking, I’m just not as confident as you appear to be that if/when China does put their thumb on the TikTok algorithm to drive their nationalistic aims against us, that we will know it fast, have a much easier time dealing with it, or have a real salient case for distrusting China. I think it’s totally within the realm of possibilities that we (as a society or government) will fail to recognize the algorithm has stepped over whatever red line we set until it’s too late, effectively communicate to the public that this has happened, and put together the political capital to do something about it that is objectively better than the current ultimatum. I do not think that more time with access to TikTok is going to make the American public anymore likely to trust its government when it does have to make the decision to ban the app somewhere down the line when the CCP actually turns up the dial. We’re messing with some seriously intelligent algorithms here that few people have a good understanding of. I’m not confident that we will know when it is actively turned against the US until it’s turned even more American youths into China-sympathizers.
Ironically, I think you're explaining this very moment quite well. We don't have solid evidence; we don't know what they're doing/not doing, and we're doing a piss-poor job explaining to people why it should be banned.
Unless we're going to move into a shelter-in-place strategy for global social media, we're going to have to look at the risk/benefit trade-offs of such apps and make reasonable, clear-headed, and non-xenophobic decisions based on objective sets of criteria.
I find it interesting how inured everyone is to *actual* media outlets such as FoxNews, who *actually* do put their thumbs on the scales to help disrupt fair and reasonable democratic discourse.
The problem with this is that there existed plenty of anti-TikTok sentiment and pressure to ban TikTok *literal* years before October 7th, dating back to the first Trump administration. Despite what people for whom I/P is the *only* issue think, contentious things can be contentious completely separate from I/P.
Life is a series of trade-offs. Even if they are scraping out critical views of the Chinese government, I don't see this as a mission-critical problem for an entertainment app. And I certainly don't see it warranting sinking to China's level to ban stuff just because we don't like its values.
We know that X's algo also suppresses a ton of topics -- and espouses outright lies -- yet I see no push to ban it.
LOL at the idea that refusing to let a country like China (that is explicit in their desire to undermine democracy) have a megaphone directly into our ears is somehow xenophobia.
FoxNews' explicit desire is to undermine one of our two major political parties. MSNBC's implicit desire is the same.
And we let both networks call themselves "Cable News."
The CCP has yet to demonstrate a lack of discipline in using TikTok to undermine anything. They have chosen to fund actual infrastructure hacker groups to do that instead.
While it's impossible to measure accurately, what we can measure is that Fox News is the most watched news outlet in the country.
TikTok is an entertainment platform like YouTube. And YouTube has a far higher view rate than TikTok.
Again, and for the last time: we can be wary of what China may do given their political desires to undermine the West.
But to treat a Chinese-owned company as de facto CCP is not only an evidence-free assertion, but lays out more reasons for China to want to undermine us. It makes us act like the enemy they're convinced we are becoming.
The Law of Unintended Consequences continues to stymie Neoconservatives, xenophobes, and fear mongerers.
We should not ban; we should adapt and get stronger by developing genesralized social (and traditional) media antibodies for all . 💪
Yep. And his follow up comments make it clear that he will remain wilfully ignorant of any Chinese Government interference on TikTok. This at or may not be a bot, but it’s not a person seeking to explore the issue in good faith.
The phrasing was clumsy, but this is substack for goodness sake, and a *comment* on substack to boot. If I had nickel for every time I noticed clumsy phrasing, missing words, misplaced or absent punctuation just *after* hitting the blue up arrow I could afford to buy Tik Tok!
Having said that, I’m generally unpersuaded by Mr. Deutsch (and I’m a libertarian so it’s unusual for me to favoring this sort (or any sort)) of government action. OTOH, it’s doing it to another government so it’s hard for me to get too worked up about it. I don’t really *favor* it so much as *don’t care.* Banning foreign ownership of companies is generally a bad idea (appalled at the ruling on Nippon steel). But, and maybe this is a flavor of both-sidesism, considering that the president, acting alone, could place 1000% tariff on imports of Chinese anything, I don’t see how he’s constrained from doing this, let alone when “this” is being done by statute! Given the scope of SCOTUS readings of the expansive nature of the commerce clause over the last 100 years it’s hard to imagine them finding Congress’s action unconstitutional. “Of course Congress can constitutionally prevent a farmer from eating the produce from his own farm! Are you kidding? But ban Tik Tok, which isn’t even owned by Americans? THAT’S A BRIDGE TOO FAR!”
I will admit, I am an unusual American. But, still, an American, and a patriotic one at that. You can check out all of my online writing in a variety of places -- ranging from technology to philosophy to music to politics -- at http://jondeutsch.com. My creative and analytical life is an open book.
I am not using "national pride" as an excuse or a rationale. I'm using "national pride" as an axiomatic cultural attribute that should be considered in analysis, independent of how comfortable we are with the idea.
Just to be clear: if Tik Tok wasn’t owned by the Chinese government (directly or because they can arrest its owners for any reason at any time) I would oppose this ban. As it is though, I’m ambivalent, leaning toward being OK with it.
You slightly misstate the analogy, ask instead "should America not ban every social app from every country which is, by law, controlled by a foreign government" and the answer is yes. Layer on top "controlled by a government which is demonstratively hostile", the answer is hell yes.
I wish James’ response had been less conciliatory. We don’t ban everything from every country because it would be a really stupid thing to do and is not reasonably comparable to banning a media company owned by a totalitarian de facto enemy.
I disagree with James. If we get to a point where we’re banning foreign products simply because they’re foreign we’re in grave danger of losing *all* of our freedoms, not just the freedom to engage in voluntary exchange with people outside the US.
“conservatively coded” — THAT is hilarious. As James replied, “who cares?” Well, someone who thinks the legislation wasn’t passed with overwhelming bipartisan support? And signed into law by a Democrat whose pen hand wasn’t being held by another (more progressive) Democrat? If it’s coded as anything (in my mind) it’s coded as “doing a favor for American competitors with deep pockets and who gives a shit if Tik Tok is banned? Certainly not *voters*!”
It was bipartisan because support for Israel is bipartisan.
I can't wait when we learn what was spoken about behind closed doors that was so damning about TikTok and we learn it was yet-another Iraq-WMD-bullshit situation.
The videos I saw on Tiktok from Gaza radicalized me and millions of others, to the atrocities occurring there. Not just children dead at the hands of US made bombs, but gleeful young IDF soldiers talking about killing Palestinians like a blood sport. None of that was on the mainstream news.
That’s the reason they banned the app. Regardless of what happens with TikTok, millions of US citizens were forced to come to terms with brutal hypocrisy of US foreign policy. Israel is aided in its attempts to expand its borders while Russia is condemned.
On any useful platform you will have censorship. I would prefer we educate the population that in the US, the oligarchs are the arbiters of “truth” on social media and in China, it is the CCP. Let us be free to pick our poison.
Seeing anti-CCP, pro-US narratives in English-speaking media is going to push American users of 小红书 even further into anti-US stances. When people hear things about 小红书 that directly contradict their own experiences with that community, they're going to increasingly believe that English-language media is deliberately lying to them about China.
I feel like TikTok is a moot point now tbh. There are probably at least a million white and Black Americans who are now highly motivated to learn Mandarin and buy Chinese phone numbers, so they can continue to bond over cat memes and Luigi edits with their new friends inside the Great Firewall.
Question about these apps; my understanding is that TikTok doesn't allow American and Chinese users to see each others' content. Because Chinese-style censorship would be unacceptable to Americans. Have I misunderstood, is there actual cultural exchange going on?
TikTok has a parallel app called 抖音 (Douyin) that exists within the Great Firewall, while TikTok itself only exists outside of the Great Firewall. No getting into Douyin without a Chinese phone number, etc.
At least as of a couple days ago, if there hasn't been any geofencing going up just yet, American citizens on US soil with American IP addresses and American phone numbers have been able to chat with Chinese netizens on 小红书 (Xiaohongshu, Little Red Book, REDnote, whatever) to their hearts' content, so long as they heed the platform's rules about the no-no topics. What I've seen Chinese netizens say is that the basic rules are One China, no politics, no religion, no superstition (except traditional Chinese medicine, based on what I've seen), no drugs, no porn, no gambling, no displays of wealth, no disinformation, no watermarks for other apps, no hate campaigns against other users, no impersonating other users, don't criticize the CCP, basically trying to avoid divisive topics in general, trying to all get along and pretend things are chill.
I've seen American TikTok users say that they've been hanging out on 小红书 for beauty tips for the last several months or longer, and Chinese folks studying in the US complaining that they'll be losing what used to be a refuge where they could get away from Americans and chat with people back in mainland China. There's a chance that, now that Americans are broadly aware of the existence of the app, it's going to be set up so that we can't talk with people inside the Great Firewall anymore.
I was there Sunday night American time, Monday morning China time, and people were definitely confused at all the American IP addresses they were seeing, like wondering whether they opened the wrong app.
“I've seen American TikTok users say that they've been hanging out on 小红书 for beauty tips for the last several months or longer, and Chinese folks studying in the US complaining that they'll be losing what used to be a refuge where they could get away from Americans and chat with people back in mainland China.”
I’m confused: this legislation criminalizes making phone calls from the US to the Chinese mainland?
“There's a chance that, now that Americans are broadly aware of the existence of the app, it's going to be set up so that we can't talk with people inside the Great Firewall anymore.”
No, there’s zero chance that the US government will set something up that would prevent Americans from talking to people on mainland China, or anywhere else for that matter. Zero.
I am grateful to you for providing the information about 抖音 (Douyin). It’s interesting.
I'm having trouble understanding your confusion. Phone calls are different from Pinterest, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or Yelp, or NextDoor, or LinkedIn, or whatever other social-media-adjacent platform you might be familiar with. If a platform like Xiaohongshu begins segregating mainland Chinese IP addresses from the rest of the world, people outside of China would only be seeing other people outside of China, and people within China would only be seeing other people within China.
What was in question was whether China would choose to sever this connection that became popular literally overnight between Sunday and Monday. My hunch is that that won't happen. A CCP-controlled media outlet has said that they value the cultural exchange happening now. Americans and Chinese netizens making friends on Xiaohongshu is a massive propaganda victory for China, because Americans are seeing a heavily censored and curated view of China, and they're loving what they see.
It's worth probing what "control" means here. An app is not like a news network, an algorithm is not like an editor. To the extent that people felt a kind of authentic, small-d democratic vibe in TikTok, it was because the app did empower users in a way its competitors didn't. The platform algorithm was geared to make a bunch of people a little famous than a few people very famous (there is no MrBeast or Kim Kardashian of TikTok). The platform also offered a suite of video-editing software that made the creation of vertical video more accessible.
To see the Zoomers as simply duped by China is to misunderstand how TikTok works and how people act. And I don't think the "national security" argument hits the same for a generation that feels estranged from power, under a President and party (supported by Meta and X) who is clearly authoritarian.
I’m getting actively angry at people like Taylor Lorenz who are unquestionably shilling RedNote to their followers without a single thought in their heads. This is the most obvious push by the Chinese government or its agents that I can imagine, and people are happily falling for it. Really pisses me off.
I do have some sympathy for people who depend on TikTok for their livelihoods and are not spreading complete nonsense, creating intentional ragebait, exploiting their children, or selling plastic junk to their followers. And hopefully those ten people will be able to flourish on YouTube, Instagram or the like.
American hegemony has generally brought good things. Do you have any reason to believe that Chinese hegemony would be better? Because that’s the alternative in many places.
> It’s why such a sizable pro-Russia contingent exists online when Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a fairly uncomplicated good vs evil situation.
This is ludicrous. Basically nothing is "a fairly uncomplicated good v evil situation", and certainly nothing in geopolitics.
> Joe Biden? Monstrous war criminal. Xi Jinping? Just a friendly guy, long live China.
But she didn't mention Xi Jinping? Just like she didn't impugn the United States itself when she called Joe Biden a war criminal. Criticism or praise of a state is, of course, not the same as criticism or praise of its current head. I'm no Taylor Lorenz fan, but this really jumps out as either careless reasoning, or simply dishonest.
> 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.
This also strikes me as a poor argument. You yourself state the obvious explanation ('a bluff for the purpose of political pressure', although even that seems unnecessarily grandiose when pretended unwillingness to sell is probably the oldest and most ubiquitous negotiation tactic), but immediately discard it in favour of more glamorous conspiracy theorising. The CCP is almost certainly very influential, if not entirely in control, at ByteDance, but the company's failure to immediately cave to political pressure to sell (and therefore almost certainly depress the price) is no evidence at all of that, let alone the dispositive proof you present it as.
It doesn’t strike me as either careless reasoning or dishonesty. It strikes as the kind of casual hyperbole one sometimes engages in on forums like these to make a point. You’re damn right she didn’t mention Xi Jinping and she won’t until she has something nice to say about him.
Isn't "casual hyperbole to make a point" dishonesty? To the extent that you have exaggerated the truth, the effectiveness of your point is premised upon a falsehood. If you need to use casual hyperbole to strengthen your point, you're tacitly accepting that reality hasn't provided enough supporting evidence, and you have had to concoct some.
I wouldn't characterise this as "on a forum", by the way, This guy is a professional commentator, and makes a lot of money from this blog. He co-founded the Centre for New Liberalism! Maybe not quite *all* the standards of a journalist apply to him, but I think it's worth pointing out when he's blatantly twisting the words of his ideological opponent in this way.
I didn't even mention the full extent of it initially. Here's how he introduces the quote:
> 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
Lorenz had nothing to say about "the murderous Chinese regime". She said "long live China". If I say 'long live Scotland', I'm not, of course, praising Keir Starmer or John Swinney. So this is, quite frankly, a lie.
Then the bit I did mention, which is worse:
> Joe Biden? Monstrous war criminal. Xi Jinping? Just a friendly guy, long live China.
Xi Jinping, just a friendly guy? Where has that come from?! I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can interpret that as anything other than dishonesty. What Lorenz said does not remotely imply this.
He's mischaracterisating Lorenz' stated sentiment, and turning it into a completely different, much more controversial and potentially objectionable thing- that she flat out *did not say*.
I think the biggest thing is that people are bummed because TikTok is literally a good app, it works well and a lot of people enjoyed it during Covid for entertainment. Will another app capture that? Surely
That seems reasonable, and it'd be fine if TikTok sold to another owner. I'm especially sympathetic to people who built a large following there who are now screwed through no fault of their own.
It just doesn't override the obvious national security issues.
Agreed. If it still works with new owners then that’s what every American should be rooting for.
I've got to challenge the definition of TikTok as a "good app". It's essentially the distillation of all the worst things about engaging with the internet (encouraging unhealthy engagement, using negative affect to drive engagement, focusing on keeping people hooked above any pretense of other value). It's a sugar and caffeine dump straight to your brain's pleasure centers. It might be effective at what it's trying to do, but I would never say it's "good". People would enjoy it if companies were allowed to put heroin in their chicken nuggets (and would certainly buy a ton of them), but I wouldn't describe it as "good".
Agree with this. It feels notable that our host here has basically conceded the point that “addictive” means “good”.
Like most social media apps, your opinion of it depends on what slice of it the algorithm bestows on you. Yes, there is a lot of stupid stuff but there is also a lot of regular people who are trying to do something to give a little more meaning to their lives. There’s a surprising amount of good music on it. Jacques Pepin inspires with simple, classic recipes. A chef with stage 4 cancer showing he’s still got it. The Brooklyn pizza place that is like stepping back in time. An enthusiastic young English trainspotter with who is both sharp and charmingly free of irony. The insanely hard-working Vietnamese woman who can build anything with local bamboo.
I know nothing about the national security aspects of TikTok but since China has been effectively hacking our intelligence, corporate and banking sectors for a while, I’m not sure that TikTok should be our highest priority. To be sure, I’d prefer if Americans read books instead of being on social media but that war was lost a couple of decades ago.
The app itself is explicitly trying to generate addition. That's the literal goal. Just because someone finds a way to put some meaningful content on it doesn't mean that the app isn't bad on balance. As a counterpoint, I'm sure there are a few garbage blogs here on Substack, but the format itself encourages deep exploration/discussion of a topic and robust discussion. The small negative group doesn't outweigh the structurally good design. The opposite is true of TikTok.
This article did a fine job of explaining why TikTok works against America’s self interest, and you still think it’s a “good app”?
Showing content controlled by the CCP “works well”?
The fact that the content on the Chinese version is completely different than the American version sealed its fate for me. No thanks.
I genuinely agree with the main points of this article. I also don’t understand why our homegrown TikTok substitutes have been such poor quality. It’s just not close for I want to watch like vlog type content, pop music stuff and introducing we music.
Threads is limited by policy and you tube has a lot of problems of being fused with a long form video service.
It’s not to say we should step back but it seems like it’s going to be like just worse for reasons that are usually tangential to most people’s experience of the app.
That app isn't going to be Substack, which from a tech perspective is flaming garbage.
Anyone who's ever dealt with an addict is familiar with everything we're seeing over the TikTok ban - this is simply demonstrating how many people are addicted to TikTok. They can use any other cover they want, but it's addict behavior, plain and simple.
Honestly - the memes and cultural hilarity of a bunch of Gen Z Americans getting on Rednote is worth the effort of banning tik tok. Can't wait to see how this ends
I'm in a rare position in disagreeing with you. But not on the premise, but rather on the context.
The *real* reason Congress decided to finally take action on TikTok was the aftermath of Oct 7.
TikTok lit up with footage and content that was incrediblly sensitive to the Gazan experience, which, in turn, created a massive sentiment against Israel.
This, in part, is what led to the college campus protest movement.
Anyone and everyone in the American Foreign Policy world saw this unfold and sold into their congregational colleagues that this kind of "propaganda" was literally undermining American foreign policy political salience.
Here's the thing: my hypothesis (by knowing many GenZers) is that TikTok was simply providing its users, as usual, what they wanted in their content feeds.
This was not a conspiracy. This was not CCP interference with American foreign policy. This is a new generation having their Vietnam Moment. And our politicians misdiagnosing the dynamics of how we got there.
Meta-point: I don't think it's ever a good idea to be predictive in policy. There is no evidence that China is (or would) use the feed to do anything but make their country look less awful). If/when they do step over a line (a line that we should legislate), then there would be consequences.
But our government should do everyone a favor and stop copying our adversaries who ban things as their move, and instead draw red lines about standards that must be met.
Also, does nobody see the law of unintended consequences of pushing China away and thinking so lowly of their national pride that "just sell it!" would ever make sense to them? Our desire to play their game their way is just not the America I grew up in. We were always the "bigger people" with more high-minded strategies to create incentive structures to have others comply with our desires. We architected win/win scenarios.
We never banned things. And when we tried to limit risk under the guise of national security (Japanese interment camps, McCarthyism), we embarrassed ourselves.
Regarding the "just sell it!" solution: Would we "just sell!" American success stories to another country because they didn't like that the company was based on America? No way, Jose. We'd rally around the "Made In America" slogan like the proud nationalists we are. Even as our own national security apparatus has been caught red handed tracking virtually everything happening online, and caught doing the same in allies' digital activity (see: Germany).
What we need to do is step back and develop an FDA-like process for rating the quality and safety of social applications. Inform people, don't tell them what they can and can't have.
The Internet created a version of the world where national borders are porous and almost irrelevant from an information perspective.
Barring a destruction of society and infrastructure, that genie isn't going back in the bottle.
It's time to acknowledge this and develop policies that reflect this reality.
Banning an app is the least sophisticated and least effective and least "American(tm)" strategy to address what our politicians really are scared of: our future leaders being ideologically captured by the oppressor/oppressed dynamic of politics.
Cheers!
"Also, does nobody see the law of unintended consequences of pushing China away and thinking so lowly of their national pride that "just sell it!" would ever make sense to them?"
See, this exactly the point I'm trying to make. Even TikTok defenders **admit the case against them is true**. The whole point is that it's not an independent company, it's controlled by the totalitarian Chinese government. And in your response, you frame it as ***China*** having too much national pride to sell. It's admitting that the CCP controls what happens, not the company! That's the point!
Additionally, the US forced a divestiture of Grindr from its Chinese owner in 2020 and nobody batted an eye. I wonder why it's different this time?
Actually, I disagree with this assessment. National Pride is a real thing that happens to all nations/societies/tribes/groups/etc. And I was not suggesting that the Chinese government, per se, would halt the sale over national pride. I'm suggesting ByteDance, being a Chinese company -- and presumably proud to be the first company to create a Chinese-owned social media phenomenon, would have just as much pride in "Made In China" as Boeing did with their first "Made in America" jetliner.
Further, I'd argue that an epistemic view of cultural bonds makes this axiomatic, not proving a point that the Chinese are up to no good with regards to TikTok.
To level-set, I am no China apologist. I'm quite aware that Xi has aims to harm America and our allies. It's literally in his platform. What is concerning is that we're using this fact as a cudgel to presumably falsely allege behaviors that simply haven't occurred (yet) in China's corporate sector.
Yes, China has a history of meddling with companies in China, so there is certainly reason for *concern.*
The law congress passed was not one based on "concern" - it was based on their (private, unreleased, unverifiable) claims of what China was actually doing.
This is the problem.
If/when China does put their thumb on the TikTok algo to drive their nationalistic aims against us, we'll a) most likely know it, fast, b) will have a much easier time dealing with it as a result, and c) have a real case for no country to trust China going forward, which is far more powerful than evidence-free fearmongering.
This stinks of "Iraq has WMDs" all over again.
Sorry Jon, if you think China does not censor tiktok, try finding videos on Tiananmen Square, or Taiwan independence or China interference with free speech in Hong Kong or Uyghur suppression
Have you ever considered that American (or any) Tweens just aren't posting about ancient Chinese history?
Have you ever searched for videos on the Yamato emperors of Japan? How many videos are there on that topic?
The lack of evidence doesn't prove anything. You need actual evidence to prove something.
Censorship is built into tiktok, from a 2024 study "By searching for four keywords—Uyghur, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Tiananmen—on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, the researchers found that TikTok's algorithm displayed a higher percentage of positive, neutral, or irrelevant content related to China's human rights abuses compared to both Instagram and YouTube."
I'm sure it's just coincidence or are Insta and yt users different?
Also, if the study your referencing is authored by the Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), then please note that their prior report on tiktok was heavily scrutinized. Further, the very nature and name of the organization reeks of mission bias.
Not to be snide, but, yes, every digital marker knows there are marked demographic differences amongst social media properties. These stats don't surprise me at all based on user makeup and (non-cirumspect) algorithmic intent.
I’m sympathetic to your point against predictive policymaking, I’m just not as confident as you appear to be that if/when China does put their thumb on the TikTok algorithm to drive their nationalistic aims against us, that we will know it fast, have a much easier time dealing with it, or have a real salient case for distrusting China. I think it’s totally within the realm of possibilities that we (as a society or government) will fail to recognize the algorithm has stepped over whatever red line we set until it’s too late, effectively communicate to the public that this has happened, and put together the political capital to do something about it that is objectively better than the current ultimatum. I do not think that more time with access to TikTok is going to make the American public anymore likely to trust its government when it does have to make the decision to ban the app somewhere down the line when the CCP actually turns up the dial. We’re messing with some seriously intelligent algorithms here that few people have a good understanding of. I’m not confident that we will know when it is actively turned against the US until it’s turned even more American youths into China-sympathizers.
Ironically, I think you're explaining this very moment quite well. We don't have solid evidence; we don't know what they're doing/not doing, and we're doing a piss-poor job explaining to people why it should be banned.
Unless we're going to move into a shelter-in-place strategy for global social media, we're going to have to look at the risk/benefit trade-offs of such apps and make reasonable, clear-headed, and non-xenophobic decisions based on objective sets of criteria.
I find it interesting how inured everyone is to *actual* media outlets such as FoxNews, who *actually* do put their thumbs on the scales to help disrupt fair and reasonable democratic discourse.
Fascinating.
The problem with this is that there existed plenty of anti-TikTok sentiment and pressure to ban TikTok *literal* years before October 7th, dating back to the first Trump administration. Despite what people for whom I/P is the *only* issue think, contentious things can be contentious completely separate from I/P.
Yeah it's an point to make. Maybe October 7th was the straw that broke the camel's back, but Trump was talking about this back in 2020!
Yes, he was, because he believed that "liberal" TikTok was hurting his campaign event attendance and then started using Sino-fearism as a rationale.
Gotta keep up on the fine details of these tales...they matter!
Yes, there was. But based on even more *feelings of insecurity* vs. anything tangible.
This feels so much like the unsubstantiated-yet-feels-tough drumbeat leading up to the 2nd Iraq War for me, it's giving me GWB vibes.
This is a funny bit.
The fact that the app suppresses topics that are critical of the Chinese government fully refutes your argument. Go look at the data.
Life is a series of trade-offs. Even if they are scraping out critical views of the Chinese government, I don't see this as a mission-critical problem for an entertainment app. And I certainly don't see it warranting sinking to China's level to ban stuff just because we don't like its values.
We know that X's algo also suppresses a ton of topics -- and espouses outright lies -- yet I see no push to ban it.
Xenophobia takes many shapes.
LOL at the idea that refusing to let a country like China (that is explicit in their desire to undermine democracy) have a megaphone directly into our ears is somehow xenophobia.
FoxNews' explicit desire is to undermine one of our two major political parties. MSNBC's implicit desire is the same.
And we let both networks call themselves "Cable News."
The CCP has yet to demonstrate a lack of discipline in using TikTok to undermine anything. They have chosen to fund actual infrastructure hacker groups to do that instead.
While it's impossible to measure accurately, what we can measure is that Fox News is the most watched news outlet in the country.
TikTok is an entertainment platform like YouTube. And YouTube has a far higher view rate than TikTok.
Again, and for the last time: we can be wary of what China may do given their political desires to undermine the West.
But to treat a Chinese-owned company as de facto CCP is not only an evidence-free assertion, but lays out more reasons for China to want to undermine us. It makes us act like the enemy they're convinced we are becoming.
The Law of Unintended Consequences continues to stymie Neoconservatives, xenophobes, and fear mongerers.
We should not ban; we should adapt and get stronger by developing genesralized social (and traditional) media antibodies for all . 💪
That phrasing caught my eye as well.
Yep. And his follow up comments make it clear that he will remain wilfully ignorant of any Chinese Government interference on TikTok. This at or may not be a bot, but it’s not a person seeking to explore the issue in good faith.
Please elucidate!
In addition, it’s not really a phrasing native English speakers would use.
The phrasing was clumsy, but this is substack for goodness sake, and a *comment* on substack to boot. If I had nickel for every time I noticed clumsy phrasing, missing words, misplaced or absent punctuation just *after* hitting the blue up arrow I could afford to buy Tik Tok!
Having said that, I’m generally unpersuaded by Mr. Deutsch (and I’m a libertarian so it’s unusual for me to favoring this sort (or any sort)) of government action. OTOH, it’s doing it to another government so it’s hard for me to get too worked up about it. I don’t really *favor* it so much as *don’t care.* Banning foreign ownership of companies is generally a bad idea (appalled at the ruling on Nippon steel). But, and maybe this is a flavor of both-sidesism, considering that the president, acting alone, could place 1000% tariff on imports of Chinese anything, I don’t see how he’s constrained from doing this, let alone when “this” is being done by statute! Given the scope of SCOTUS readings of the expansive nature of the commerce clause over the last 100 years it’s hard to imagine them finding Congress’s action unconstitutional. “Of course Congress can constitutionally prevent a farmer from eating the produce from his own farm! Are you kidding? But ban Tik Tok, which isn’t even owned by Americans? THAT’S A BRIDGE TOO FAR!”
Oy gavult
I will admit, I am an unusual American. But, still, an American, and a patriotic one at that. You can check out all of my online writing in a variety of places -- ranging from technology to philosophy to music to politics -- at http://jondeutsch.com. My creative and analytical life is an open book.
I am not using "national pride" as an excuse or a rationale. I'm using "national pride" as an axiomatic cultural attribute that should be considered in analysis, independent of how comfortable we are with the idea.
Please don't fake quote me. I said no such thing. Cheers.
But to suggest that any algo can't have any bias just doesn't seem to be rational.
It's the nature and the practical impact of the bias that matters.
X has a specific bias that could be argued has just as much practical impact on national security (Russia empathy) as TikTok.
This is why having standards is what should be pursued - not bans.
Just to be clear: if Tik Tok wasn’t owned by the Chinese government (directly or because they can arrest its owners for any reason at any time) I would oppose this ban. As it is though, I’m ambivalent, leaning toward being OK with it.
Following this way of thinking, why should America not ban every social app from every country that's not an explicit ally? Should that be the policy?
You slightly misstate the analogy, ask instead "should America not ban every social app from every country which is, by law, controlled by a foreign government" and the answer is yes. Layer on top "controlled by a government which is demonstratively hostile", the answer is hell yes.
I wish James’ response had been less conciliatory. We don’t ban everything from every country because it would be a really stupid thing to do and is not reasonably comparable to banning a media company owned by a totalitarian de facto enemy.
I disagree with James. If we get to a point where we’re banning foreign products simply because they’re foreign we’re in grave danger of losing *all* of our freedoms, not just the freedom to engage in voluntary exchange with people outside the US.
Banning is usually a signal of weakness. And a conservatively-coded one at that.
If we ban it (and I doubt we will), history will likely look at this as moral panic.
If we ban it (and I doubt we will), we will likely see unintended consequences that make the decision look petty and short-sighted.
“conservatively coded” — THAT is hilarious. As James replied, “who cares?” Well, someone who thinks the legislation wasn’t passed with overwhelming bipartisan support? And signed into law by a Democrat whose pen hand wasn’t being held by another (more progressive) Democrat? If it’s coded as anything (in my mind) it’s coded as “doing a favor for American competitors with deep pockets and who gives a shit if Tik Tok is banned? Certainly not *voters*!”
It was bipartisan because support for Israel is bipartisan.
I can't wait when we learn what was spoken about behind closed doors that was so damning about TikTok and we learn it was yet-another Iraq-WMD-bullshit situation.
We'll never learn, will we.
The videos I saw on Tiktok from Gaza radicalized me and millions of others, to the atrocities occurring there. Not just children dead at the hands of US made bombs, but gleeful young IDF soldiers talking about killing Palestinians like a blood sport. None of that was on the mainstream news.
That’s the reason they banned the app. Regardless of what happens with TikTok, millions of US citizens were forced to come to terms with brutal hypocrisy of US foreign policy. Israel is aided in its attempts to expand its borders while Russia is condemned.
On any useful platform you will have censorship. I would prefer we educate the population that in the US, the oligarchs are the arbiters of “truth” on social media and in China, it is the CCP. Let us be free to pick our poison.
Re Soupy, never under estimate the spectacular ignorance of the young
Some people make their livelihood on the app. Some ZOMG CCP complaint that has no actual basis isn't going to impress them.
Hi, Techmod!
Seeing anti-CCP, pro-US narratives in English-speaking media is going to push American users of 小红书 even further into anti-US stances. When people hear things about 小红书 that directly contradict their own experiences with that community, they're going to increasingly believe that English-language media is deliberately lying to them about China.
I feel like TikTok is a moot point now tbh. There are probably at least a million white and Black Americans who are now highly motivated to learn Mandarin and buy Chinese phone numbers, so they can continue to bond over cat memes and Luigi edits with their new friends inside the Great Firewall.
Question about these apps; my understanding is that TikTok doesn't allow American and Chinese users to see each others' content. Because Chinese-style censorship would be unacceptable to Americans. Have I misunderstood, is there actual cultural exchange going on?
TikTok has a parallel app called 抖音 (Douyin) that exists within the Great Firewall, while TikTok itself only exists outside of the Great Firewall. No getting into Douyin without a Chinese phone number, etc.
At least as of a couple days ago, if there hasn't been any geofencing going up just yet, American citizens on US soil with American IP addresses and American phone numbers have been able to chat with Chinese netizens on 小红书 (Xiaohongshu, Little Red Book, REDnote, whatever) to their hearts' content, so long as they heed the platform's rules about the no-no topics. What I've seen Chinese netizens say is that the basic rules are One China, no politics, no religion, no superstition (except traditional Chinese medicine, based on what I've seen), no drugs, no porn, no gambling, no displays of wealth, no disinformation, no watermarks for other apps, no hate campaigns against other users, no impersonating other users, don't criticize the CCP, basically trying to avoid divisive topics in general, trying to all get along and pretend things are chill.
I've seen American TikTok users say that they've been hanging out on 小红书 for beauty tips for the last several months or longer, and Chinese folks studying in the US complaining that they'll be losing what used to be a refuge where they could get away from Americans and chat with people back in mainland China. There's a chance that, now that Americans are broadly aware of the existence of the app, it's going to be set up so that we can't talk with people inside the Great Firewall anymore.
I was there Sunday night American time, Monday morning China time, and people were definitely confused at all the American IP addresses they were seeing, like wondering whether they opened the wrong app.
“I've seen American TikTok users say that they've been hanging out on 小红书 for beauty tips for the last several months or longer, and Chinese folks studying in the US complaining that they'll be losing what used to be a refuge where they could get away from Americans and chat with people back in mainland China.”
I’m confused: this legislation criminalizes making phone calls from the US to the Chinese mainland?
“There's a chance that, now that Americans are broadly aware of the existence of the app, it's going to be set up so that we can't talk with people inside the Great Firewall anymore.”
No, there’s zero chance that the US government will set something up that would prevent Americans from talking to people on mainland China, or anywhere else for that matter. Zero.
I am grateful to you for providing the information about 抖音 (Douyin). It’s interesting.
I'm having trouble understanding your confusion. Phone calls are different from Pinterest, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or Yelp, or NextDoor, or LinkedIn, or whatever other social-media-adjacent platform you might be familiar with. If a platform like Xiaohongshu begins segregating mainland Chinese IP addresses from the rest of the world, people outside of China would only be seeing other people outside of China, and people within China would only be seeing other people within China.
What was in question was whether China would choose to sever this connection that became popular literally overnight between Sunday and Monday. My hunch is that that won't happen. A CCP-controlled media outlet has said that they value the cultural exchange happening now. Americans and Chinese netizens making friends on Xiaohongshu is a massive propaganda victory for China, because Americans are seeing a heavily censored and curated view of China, and they're loving what they see.
I think China hawks should be nervous right now.
It's worth probing what "control" means here. An app is not like a news network, an algorithm is not like an editor. To the extent that people felt a kind of authentic, small-d democratic vibe in TikTok, it was because the app did empower users in a way its competitors didn't. The platform algorithm was geared to make a bunch of people a little famous than a few people very famous (there is no MrBeast or Kim Kardashian of TikTok). The platform also offered a suite of video-editing software that made the creation of vertical video more accessible.
To see the Zoomers as simply duped by China is to misunderstand how TikTok works and how people act. And I don't think the "national security" argument hits the same for a generation that feels estranged from power, under a President and party (supported by Meta and X) who is clearly authoritarian.
I’m getting actively angry at people like Taylor Lorenz who are unquestionably shilling RedNote to their followers without a single thought in their heads. This is the most obvious push by the Chinese government or its agents that I can imagine, and people are happily falling for it. Really pisses me off.
I do have some sympathy for people who depend on TikTok for their livelihoods and are not spreading complete nonsense, creating intentional ragebait, exploiting their children, or selling plastic junk to their followers. And hopefully those ten people will be able to flourish on YouTube, Instagram or the like.
Unfortunately Elon's Twitter represents just as big a national security threat IMO.
Don't really care about all of the above, it's just nice to see American hegemony on the defense
Why?
American hegemony has generally brought good things. Do you have any reason to believe that Chinese hegemony would be better? Because that’s the alternative in many places.
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> It’s why such a sizable pro-Russia contingent exists online when Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a fairly uncomplicated good vs evil situation.
This is ludicrous. Basically nothing is "a fairly uncomplicated good v evil situation", and certainly nothing in geopolitics.
> Joe Biden? Monstrous war criminal. Xi Jinping? Just a friendly guy, long live China.
But she didn't mention Xi Jinping? Just like she didn't impugn the United States itself when she called Joe Biden a war criminal. Criticism or praise of a state is, of course, not the same as criticism or praise of its current head. I'm no Taylor Lorenz fan, but this really jumps out as either careless reasoning, or simply dishonest.
> 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.
This also strikes me as a poor argument. You yourself state the obvious explanation ('a bluff for the purpose of political pressure', although even that seems unnecessarily grandiose when pretended unwillingness to sell is probably the oldest and most ubiquitous negotiation tactic), but immediately discard it in favour of more glamorous conspiracy theorising. The CCP is almost certainly very influential, if not entirely in control, at ByteDance, but the company's failure to immediately cave to political pressure to sell (and therefore almost certainly depress the price) is no evidence at all of that, let alone the dispositive proof you present it as.
It doesn’t strike me as either careless reasoning or dishonesty. It strikes as the kind of casual hyperbole one sometimes engages in on forums like these to make a point. You’re damn right she didn’t mention Xi Jinping and she won’t until she has something nice to say about him.
I mostly agree with the rest of your comment.
Isn't "casual hyperbole to make a point" dishonesty? To the extent that you have exaggerated the truth, the effectiveness of your point is premised upon a falsehood. If you need to use casual hyperbole to strengthen your point, you're tacitly accepting that reality hasn't provided enough supporting evidence, and you have had to concoct some.
I wouldn't characterise this as "on a forum", by the way, This guy is a professional commentator, and makes a lot of money from this blog. He co-founded the Centre for New Liberalism! Maybe not quite *all* the standards of a journalist apply to him, but I think it's worth pointing out when he's blatantly twisting the words of his ideological opponent in this way.
I didn't even mention the full extent of it initially. Here's how he introduces the quote:
> 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
Lorenz had nothing to say about "the murderous Chinese regime". She said "long live China". If I say 'long live Scotland', I'm not, of course, praising Keir Starmer or John Swinney. So this is, quite frankly, a lie.
Then the bit I did mention, which is worse:
> Joe Biden? Monstrous war criminal. Xi Jinping? Just a friendly guy, long live China.
Xi Jinping, just a friendly guy? Where has that come from?! I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can interpret that as anything other than dishonesty. What Lorenz said does not remotely imply this.
He's mischaracterisating Lorenz' stated sentiment, and turning it into a completely different, much more controversial and potentially objectionable thing- that she flat out *did not say*.