President Donald Trump has made it clear he would like to ban the video-making app TikTok. Despite being mostly used by younger users to make music or comedic videos, the White House says it is worried about the platform, as the New York Times (8/1/20) explained, “because of the app’s Chinese ownership”: TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based firm ByteDance. The administration has often vilified China as a rival that intends to undermine the United States through underhanded means.
In true Trump fashion, he changed course, declaring he would be satisfied if the company were acquired by Microsoft (New York Times, 8/3/20)—though he added that he expected the US Treasury to get a cut of the profits, since it was his threat that made the sale possible (BBC, 8/4/20).
The focus on TikTok has caught many by surprise: Why would the US government care so much about such a seemingly innocuous app? The reasons for Trump’s rage are at once comical and frightening. On the one hand, Trump has found what might appear to be a random media issue to deflect from his various problems (plummeting poll numbers, rising Covid cases, slumping economy), a phenomenon that lends itself to ribbing from satirists and talkshow hosts. But the deeper problem is that he is leveraging his executive position to fight and try to take control of a media group with the excuse of its being foreign, which is both a threat to free speech and free press, and adds to his administration’s pugnacious Sinophobia.
And the reason he has fixated on TikTok, it seems clear, is because of its reported use by young online activists to organize spurious reservations to his Tulsa rally—contributing to his humiliation when the sparse attendance failed to match his boastful expectations. Trump’s use of the power of the federal government to punish media outlets he perceives as having crossed him is part of a disturbing pattern of contempt for the First Amendment’s protection of the press (FAIR.org, 8/1/20).
Bloomberg (7/14/20) notes that “security researchers say TikTok’s information-collection practices are consistent with Facebook Inc., Google and other US tech companies looking to tailor ads and services to their users.”
Corporate media have helped bang the drum against TikTok, too. The Independent (12/3/19) reported on claims that the app was loaded with Chinese spyware. Bored Panda (6/25/20) reported on claims that TikTok, while not technically malware, was certainly a “nefarious” app that was “outright evil.” Showing bipartisan anger towards the app’s Chinese origins, the Hill (8/2/20) posted on Twitter a video of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer opposing TikTok’s presence in the United States. Bloomberg (7/14/20) sounded the alarm that the app’s data harvesting was a concern of “national security.”
To accuse a free app of engaging in data mining, however, is a bit like running a headline that water is wet. Facebook, Twitter and other networks are free to use, but their owners have grown enormously rich, not through user fees, but through the cultivation of data that users make public, which is incredibly valuable for modern-day internet marketing.
In fact, the book Digital Labor makes the case that social media users engage in a form of “playbor” (play and labor), whereby the recreational activity of using these apps creates material (data and information) that are used for profit, making the user a kind of unpaid laborer creating value. As the Washington Post (7/14/20) explained, TikTok isn’t that different from Facebook in this regard.
What catches the eye of the administration—and some in the media—is the fact that TikTok is Chinese. And this makes it inherently suspicious, as the US government news service Radio Free Asia indicated when it tweeted a cartoon suggesting that the Chinese government was using the video chat service Zoom to spy on people (FAIR.org, 4/17/20). So the narrative becomes clear: When US-based corporations use apps to gather data on people, it’s just regular business, but—as indicated by Trump’s suggestion that Microsoft buying the app would solve the problem—when a Chinese-owned company does it, it’s economic and political warfare.
New York Times (6/21/20): “TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank.”
So when the New York Times (6/21/20) reported that TikTok users organized through the app to reserve tickets for Trump’s much-hyped Tulsa rally, thus helping to thin out the crowd, it gave Trump license to claim he was fighting against foreign intrusion, when he was actually just upset about his embarrassing campaign rally.
Trump’s rage toward TikTok is symptomatic of a president losing his grip on power. Deploying federal troops to suppress Black Lives Matter protests, floating the idea of delaying the election and attacking the US Postal Service (which would be vital in an election during a pandemic) are all textbook cases of a wannabe authoritarian who feels the walls closing in. He especially aims his anger at media, which both deflects from his problems and allows him to paint media coverage of those problems as simply an extension of his political opposition.
The move against TikTok, which is mostly used for entertainment purposes, could be replicated against more fact-based media the administration can’t abide. For example, the South China Morning Post is owned by the Hangzhou-based Alibaba Group ; could a few anti-Trump editorials make the venerated paper a “national security threat”? This isn’t so unthinkable, as the New York Times (2/18/20) reported that the US State Department announced that China’s “five foremost news agencies — Xinhua, CGTN, China Radio, China Daily and the People’s Daily — will officially be treated as foreign government functionaries.” The move came, the paper reported,
at a time when the administration has moved aggressively on multiple fronts to fight what officials describe as extensive Chinese influence and intelligence operations in the United States.
Whatever one thinks of these news organizations, progressives and conservatives alike should agree that the US government, in the interest of free speech and free press, shouldn’t restrict the ability of foreign news organizations to report the news or restrict what information Americans can consume.
A TikTok ban would be another instalment of the kind of anti-Chinese scapegoating Trump has made a part of his rhetoric—China is to blame for our economic woes, and it’s the cause of the pandemic, he has declared to his base, without evidence. He has even attacked Chinese-American CBS journalist Weijia Jiang, insinuating that her loyalties rest with Beijing (CNN, 5/12/20). This debasement of reality has fueled anti-Asian racism. As CBS (7/2/20) reported, there have been more than 2,000 reported incidents of hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic.
There’s another thread here. As FAIR contributor Alan MacLeod noted on Twitter (8/3/20), Microsoft’s share prices soared after Trump changed direction, indicating that Trump’s threats were part of a government-sponsored hostile takeover of a foreign business. Leaving aside any economic debate about such protectionism, the idea that he could use this model against other forms of media is no joking matter.
That Trump is lashing out at some youngsters making music videos is indeed the kind of absurdity his administration has employed that makes satire almost impossible, but the free speech and anti-Asian repercussions of this move are real and dangerous. That some in the media and the Democratic Party have helped Trump in this regard only solidifies this fear.
Featured image: Screengrab from Bloomberg video segment (7/14/20) on “Why TikTok Is Target of So Much US Scrutiny.”
The Yellow Journalism Peril
What is the signal to every govt in the world? They are free to force the sale of, or shut down every foreign app operating on it’s territory? Imagine the chaos if this were to happens to twitter, fb, etc. This is a shameful state robbery. I’m truly embarrassed for the US.
Instead of doing what Trump wants, changing the topic, you could have focused on why he is so intent on this web site. There is no point in writing about the issue itself; you would provide a much higher service linking Trump’s constant attention changing behavior to the disasters he brings on us. Stop playing into his craziness. Start reporting his dishonest, paranoid behavior along with which you and so many sources play along. Serve us, the working people, instead of this warped, mentally ill homunculus.
The first question to ask is always: is it true? Is Tik Tok mining data? Yes. Are they a Chinese company who could be controlled by the CCP? Yes. Do the Chinese have a history of IP theft? Yes. Now, the rest is opinion. Might the CCP mine this data for nefarious reasons? I think so. If you have never been attacked by a person who stole much of your data, count yourself lucky. They harm the Chinese could do is immeasurable.
This data is being voluntarily provided by anyone who signs up for these “free services”.
Don’t want your internet activity “mined”, don’t sign up.
But don’t blame China or its fundamentally State Capitalist system and the Oligarchs who run it for that.
Yes, many of us know how the system works. The Chinese are not our friends. There are plenty of naive people who have no idea how damaging these people can be. Not just to themselves, but to others who did not sign up. I will blame the CCP. They did nothing to help the rest of the world while they locked down their own cities to prevent the Wuhan virus from spreading, but allowed others to fly into their country. Their leaders are evil.
LOL what a joke.
THEIR leaders are evil? Last time I checked China wasn’t drone bombing wedding parties in Afghanistan and Yemen. Last I checked China didn’t invade a foreign country on the opposite side of the world based on provably false pretenses, causing the deaths of between 288,000 and 1,000,000 mostly innocent people. China didn’t drop a nuclear weapon, China didn’t create the “back doors” into virtually every piece of hardware and software on the market like the NSA did, as exposed by Edward Snowden, and China didn’t assassinate a foreign diplomat (yes, the Iranian general was in Iraq to negotiate peace) in order to keep the aforementioned war going. Oh, and also – you do know that Afghanistan shares a small border with China, right? So is China occupying Mexico since 2000 like we’ve been occupying Afghanistan?
Evil again LOL. You’re a brainwashed cretin drunk on American exceptionalist propaganda.
Locked down their cities (plural ?) to let people fly into their country? What universe do you live in? There was ONE city with an outbreak that we still don’t know exactly where it came from, and it was locked down with nobody flying in or out once the virus/epidemic was identified. You’re making stuff up and you sound a lot like Donald Trump.
It is still astounding to me that USAmerica “elected” a 21st Century “Americanized” version of Father of Fascism Benito Mussolini as President of the “United” States.
There’s something fundamentally wrong about that…
Please list the fascistic items that Trump as done.
Certainly:
1. Expanding the concentration camps for immigrants beyond what Obama did.
2. Using the power of the US government to force a company to sell itself to an American firm.
3. Sending unmarked vans full of federal shock troops into demonstrations and men with no badges or ID snatching people from the street and questioning them in secret locations.
4. Holding frequent “rallies” in which he attempts to poison his supporters against “the other side” including the media at large,
5. Supporting right wing fascist coups such as in Bolivia and attempting to destroy Venezuela because their democratically elected leaders have been resistant to at least 6 American coup attempts dating back to George W. Bush
6. Making threats against his perceived enemies with the power of his office behind him
7. Trying to destroy the USPS because he knows that is the only way to prevent a loss in November if mail-in ballots end up being the main method of voting
8. Threatening to not hand over power if he loses to Joe Biden in the general election and proactively stating that if he loses it will not be due to the will of the people, but instead a corrupt system that is out to get him. However if he wins, he will call it fair and dandy.
9. Single handedly moving the US embassy in Israel to the hotly disputed site of Jerusalem knowing that it would make the right wing Israeli government happy and hurt the Palestinian’s chances of ever having rights.
Are you really this blind?
1) Did you call Obama fascistic on this or just Trump?
2) How exactly does that hurt Americans? His charter is to protect Americans. You have no idea what the Chinese can do with that data (neither do I).
3) You have no data as to where they were taken. You don’t know if the people that they took committed crimes. You basically know nothing about this situation other than Trump did something and therefore, you don’t like it.
4) Do you know what the term fascist means? How is that possibly fascistic? I’ll help you out, “dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition”
5) Again, I hope you were this vocal against Obama.
6) Vague. No specifics, because you have none.
7) Democrats have cheated many times . The President is not preventing people from voting. Everyone can vote. They just have to do it in person. Voter fraud? There are MANY cases. Just Google them. Here’s just one: A mail carrier in Pendleton County, W.V., recently admitted to investigators that he altered mail-in voting ballot documents.
8) You are just fearful. There is no proof of what he will do.
9) ALL presidents have promised to move the embassy. He’s just the first to do it. How exactly is that fascistic? That lies well within his powers. You just don’t like Israel.
I gave you a list of about 10, but apparently FAIR.org isn’t interested in a conversation or debate in their comments sections.
Why are my comments being swallowed up and yet others can make immediate posts?
“Trump’s use of the power of the federal government to punish media outlets he perceives as having crossed him is part of a disturbing pattern of contempt for the First Amendment’s protection of the press.” *** Pwogwessives have for years properly mocked claims by corporations to be citizens who enjoy freedom of speech under the Constitution. Now FAIR finds it disturbing that a foreign business might be denied First Amendment protection of speech! Worse, the business comes out of the PRC, which makes no pretense of free speech for its people, whether real bodies or enterprises. Nor does the PRC teach class freedoms as Marx and Lenin did; it operates by fiat under the infinitely flexible “leadership” of the CPC.
Great article. Thank you for being objective and fair.
Trump accuses others of doing what he either is doing or is going to do. He accuse Biden of taking away your guns. Beware. First he takes away the freedom to vote, to protest, then guns.
That might be a good analogy if Trump were taking away guns. Everyone older than 18, is a US citizen, non felon can vote. Tell me how they cannot.