If You Can’t Beat ‘Em Ban Them
I planned to write today about our December trip to Cairo and Luxor. It was our third trip to Africa and one of the most mind-opening trips that I’ve taken. Cairo is a wild city and Egypt is gorgeous. We intend to return, maybe as soon as this fall, but other events call my attention this week.
On Saturday evening, people in the US lost access to the short form video app, TikTok. The app had over 170 million US users. The ban passed by Congress last year is a betrayal of free speech and of the stated values of the country. It is also a flashing red light about how out of their depth Congressional Democrats are. They’re ill prepared to compete in the current political and media landscape and got absolutely finessed by the incoming President over this.
I think it’s worth mentioning here that I am not a TikTok user. I never opened an account and never downloaded the app. At forty-five, I’m not part of its target demographic. Hell, I am too online already. The last thing I needed was another online obsession. I also had security concerns about TikTok and as a grown adult, capable of making my own decisions, I decided not to use it.
That choice was taken away from millions by Congress this weekend. In hearings and interviews, members of both parties expressed security and data concerns but as I’ll address below this ban is absolutely not about online privacy. It is an act of state censorship. They simply don’t want people hearing the voices and perspectives on the app.
The ban was originally proposed by President Trump during the 2020 campaign, when TikTok users trolled the president by claiming thousands of rally tickets, causing a campaign event in Tulsa to be “sold out” but sparsely attended. It’s important to remember, this all started as a personal grudge of the incoming President.
In April 2024 the US Senate, under democratic leadership, passed the ban and it was signed into law by President Biden (it was a ban or forced divestment of the company but that’s getting in the weeds).
How President Trump’s personal grudge became a major priority for Congressional Democrats is an act of malpractice and rake stepping that may shift young voters and users of the app to the political right. If you were a user of TikTok, Saturday you were greeted with the following message:
A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned.
The CEO of TikTok plans to attend the inauguration tomorrow and Trump is positioned to come riding to the rescue. If TikTok doesn’t come back online in the US, Democrats shoulder the blame. If the app comes back online, it will likely be under the control of an ally of the incoming President.
Heads he wins, tails they lose.
Democratic support for a TikTok ban coalesced as it became a leading conduit for perspectives critical of the war on Gaza. These were viewed by tens of millions of young people and likely contributed to opinion shifts on the war (see data below):
I’ll concede here that the stated security and data privacy concerns over TikTok and its ties to the Chinese Communist Party are not trivial. Critics argue that the app could funnel sensitive user data to Beijing or be weaponized for propaganda purposes. These are legitimate worries. However, we should have the same concerns about properties domiciled in the US like Meta’s Facebook & Instagram and Musk’s Zombie Twitter. Banning TikTok outright is not a solution to these concerns—it’s a distraction. The heart of this issue isn’t data security; it’s control over the narratives TikTok enables. Shutting the app down in the U.S. is less about protecting users from the CCP and more about censoring those users themselves.
This is all going over like a fart in an elevator with users of the app. Here’s a post from r/GenZ on Reddit:
One of the less talked about reasons why VP Harris lost the 2024 election is that large portions of the electorate believed that President Biden was more engaged with issues in Tel Aviv and Kyiv than Tucson and Kansas City. She never did anything to distance herself from his policies and essentially ran offering voters more of the same. The electorate rejected that.
Now Democrats have taken a lead role in banning literally the most popular social media platform among young people and set the incoming President up to be the app’s savior. They’re actively pushing young voters away and setting precedent for more censorship and similar bans down the road.
Rather than competing in the marketplace of ideas, the US has decided to shut down a rival market.
In my comparative politics class we talk about the relative level of civil liberties in various countries. For over a decade, the Chinese Great Firewall and their blocking of US social media have been used as an indicator of the authoritarian nature of the regime in Beijing.
The TikTok ban is no different and that should concern you.
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Coming up on the pod I have an interview with author Karin Chenoweth about 70s school desegregation, the achievement gap, and the resegregation of US schools. Later this week, I’ll interview Professor Zoltan Grossman from the Evergreen State College about the imperial aspirations of the incoming administration and the impact it may have on indigenous people. You’ll be able to find both here.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.