TikTok’s DC Lobbying Charm Offensive Unsurprisingly Isn’t Going So Hot
To fend off a ban in the U.S., TikTok lobbyists have attempted to put on a doomed charm offensive in DC, spending a record $5.4 million on U.S. lawmaker influence last year. The effort has even involved opening transparency centers" in DC designed to educate" lawmakers on content moderation and the steps TikTok is apparently taking to assuage privacy and security concerns.
It's quite unsurprisingly not working:
This week, Chew met with at least two lawmakers in Washington, Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who have voiced concern about Americans' exposure to the popular video-sharing platform. Neither walked away swayed.
The influence campaign has had a particularly hard time penetrating the GOP. Not because the GOP cares so much about privacy and security (as we've well documented, the party actively created the oversight-optional regulatory landscape TikTok - and everyone else - exploits) but because it's pretty clear the GOP goal has always been to force a sale of TikTok and its fat ad revenues to a U.S. Republican ally.
As we've noted a few times, a ban doesn't actually fix the problem. Because the problem isn't just TikTok. The problem is our comical, corrupt failure to implement privacy legislation or competent regulatory oversight of numerous data-hoovering companies (including the dodgy data brokers that cavalierly sell access to everything from your daily location data to your mental health issues).
That's not to say TikTok is some innocent daisy undeserving of scrutiny. The company, like so many modern Internet companies, has routinely abused consumer privacy, even going so far as to spy on journalists and violate kids' privacy laws. It's a fairly typical, greedy, giant corporation which views U.S. consumer privacy as a distant afterthought.
That said, TikTok's charm offensive can never sway the GOP, because the GOP isn't actually interested in fixing the problems it's pretending to be upset about (unchecked online political propaganda, consumer privacy).
The GOP supports everything they accuse TikTok of doing (online political propaganda campaigns, reckless collection and monetization of consumer data) but only if they, or a U.S. company, are the ones doing it. That fusion of patriotism, hypocrisy and corruption makes it hard to craft any serious, meaningful policy to address the potential harms the party is hyperventilating over.
The result is a big, dumb performance designed to appear as if the primary interest is privacy, national security, and Chinese influence. But like most GOP agendas, the real goal is the accumulation of wealth and money. Namely the transfer of TikTok to a Republican-allied U.S. company like Walmart or Oracle, who'll then allow the GOP to exploit the app in all the ways the party currently accuses China of.
Democrats haven't been much better. Countless Democrats hyperventilating about TikTok have also opposed meaningful privacy legislation and meaningful FTC regulatory oversight of data brokers. And the Biden advisors' big fix" for TikTok is to tether the company tightly to Oracle, a Republican-allied tech giant with its own long history of privacy violations and dodgy political choices.
U.S. politicians can't fix the TikTok problem because they can't (or won't) even identify the actual problem (their support for largely nonexistent oversight of numerous, interconnected data monetization markets). That leaves TikTok lobbyists flailing about in a xenophobic soup trying to strike deals with folks whose only real goal is something TikTok won't support (a full transfer of all assets to U.S. ownership):
I don't think there's anything they can say. It's all about what they do, and what they do is pretty alarming," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who sits on the Commerce Committee and has been a key negotiator in discussions around data privacy legislation on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of TikTok's most outspoken and long-standing critics, said the company's engagement shows it's scared" of looming regulation. Hawley last year spearheaded a successful campaign to prohibit federal employees from downloading the app on government devices, and has proposed legislation to ban it for consumers nationwide.
It's unclear if this mess ever results in anything productive. I could see it resulting in a nationwide ban should relations between the U.S. and China deteriorate further. But as noted countless times, a ban of TikTok won't stop a universe of other barely-regulated apps, data brokers, and telecoms from abusing consumer privacy. And it certainly won't stop Chinese intelligence from obtaining all of this data.
TikTok is a problem we created via lax privacy policies we have no serious interest in fixing. It's a result of our own greed, and conscious choice to prioritize making money over national security, market health or consumer welfare. Mix in general bigotry and oodles of corruption, and you've got a ridiculous policy soup that's more romper room than serious adult policymaking.