Rubio’s Bill To Ban TikTok Is A Dumb Performance That Ignores The Real Problem

For several years we've noted how most of the calls to ban TikTok are bad faith bullshit made by a rotating crop of characters that not only couldn't care less about consumer privacy, but are directly responsible for the privacy oversight vacuum TikTok (and everybody else) exploits.

Right on cue, Texas Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher have introduced the verbosely named Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act).

The Act (pdf), according to the two lawmakers, vaguely attempts to block and prohibit all transactions from any social media company in, or under the influence of, China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern." It comes on the heels of numerous state bills attempting to ban state government employees from using TikTok on their personal devices.

Rubio's new federal bill attempts to leverage the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEA) to ban TikTok from operating domestically here in the States, despite the fact that judges have ruled several times now that the IEAA doesn't include such authority. Violating the act would result in criminal penalties of up to a $1 million fine and 20 years in prison.

Rubio trots out the now familiar argument that we simply must ban the hugely popular social media app because the Chinese could use it to propagandize children or spy on Americans:

The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok. This isn't about creative videos - this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day. We know it's used to manipulate feeds and influence elections. We know it answers to the People's Republic of China. There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company. It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good."

So there are always two underlying claims when it comes to justifying a ban on TikTok. One, that the Chinese could use the app to propagandize children, of which there's been zero meaningful evidence of at any coordinated scale. The other, more valid but overstated concern, is that TikTok-owner ByteDance will simply funnel U.S. consumer data to the Chinese government for ambiguous surveillance purposes.

Here's the thing though: for decades the GOP (and more than a few Democrats) have worked tirelessly to erode FTC privacy enforcement authority and funding, while fighting tooth and nail against absolutely any meaningful privacy legislation for the Internet era. That opened the door for countless app makers, data brokers, telecoms, and bad actors from all over the world (including TikTok) to repeatedly abuse this accountability and oversight free for all.

For years, all you had to do to dodge any scrutiny was claim that the data you're collecting is anonymized," a gibberish term with absolutely no meaning. Most anonymized users can be easily identified with just a smattering of additional datasets, allowing companies all around the globe to build detailed profiles of nearly every aspect of consumer behavior, from shopping and browsing habits to real-world movement and behavior patterns. Not even your health or mental health data is safe, really.

Bluntly, it's because we spent two decades prioritizing making money over consumer safety or market health. The check is long overdue, and you see the impact every time you turn around in the form of another hack, breach, or privacy scandal.

Of course, this free for all was abused by foreign governments. It was never a question that corruption and a lack of market oversight would be exploited by foreign governments. If you actually care about national security, holding all companies and data brokers accountable for privacy abuses should be your priority. A basic, helpful, well-written privacy law should be your priority. A working, staffed, properly funded FTC should be your priority.

The GOP (and several Democrats) aren't doing that because U.S. companies might lose some money. Instead, they're pretending that banning a single app somehow fixes the entirety of a much bigger problem. A problem they genuinely helped create by opposing pretty much any meaningful oversight for any data-hoovering operation, provided they pinky swore they weren't doing anything dodgy with it.

As we've noted several times now, you could ban TikTok immediately and the Chinese government could simply buy this (and more) data from a rotating crop of dodgy data brokers and assorted middlemen. As such, banning TikTok doesn't actually fix any of the problems here, no matter how many times FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr claims otherwise on the TV.

You can also ban TikTok if you genuinely think it helps, but if you're not doing the other stuff, you're not actually doing anything. Another TikTok will simply spring up in its place because you haven't done anything about the underlying conditions that opened the door to U.S. consumer data abuse by foreign governments. In any way. You've just put on a dumb play.

If you're genuinely concerned about national security and privacy, you'd take the time to actually study the bigger problem. Vaguely pretending you're standing up to the dastardly Chinese helps agitate and excite an often xenophobic GOP base, but what you're actually doing is comprised of little more than some hand waving and a few farts unless you take meaningful, broader action.

I tend to think the real motivation here is actually just the usual: money. The GOP wants to force ByteDance to offload TikTok to an American billionaire of its choice. If you recall, Trump's big solution" for the TikTok problem" was to sell the entire app to his buddies over at Walmart and Oracle, the latter with a long track record of its own various privacy abuses.

I'd wager this entire performance about TikTok is the lobbying off-gassing of some company that either doesn't want to compete with TikTok directly (Facebook lobbyists can often be found trying to cause DC moral panics around TikTok), or some company or companies that hope to leverage phony privacy concerns to force ByteDance to sell them one of the most popular apps in tech history.

This is context you'll find largely omitted from most press coverage of the story. Instead, you can watch as most press outlets unquestioningly frame politicians with an abysmal track record on consumer privacy (Brendan Carr or Marsha Blackburn quickly come to mind) as good faith champions of consumer privacy, despite the documented fact they're directly responsible for the problem they're pretending to fix.