The Idea That Banning TikTok Thwarts Chinese Intelligence In Any Way Is Ridiculous
As we've noted a few times, not much about the Trump administration's ban of TikTok makes coherent sense. Most of the biggest TikTok pearl clutchers in the GOP and Trump administration have actively opposed things like basic US privacy laws or even improving election security, and were utterly absent from efforts to shore up other privacy and problems, be it the abuse of cellular location data or our poorly secured telecom infrastructure. It's a bunch of xenophobia, pearl clutching, and performative politics dressed up as serious adult policy that doesn't even get close to fixing any actual problems.
And yet, many reporters and internet experts keep parroting the idea that banning TikTok somehow "protects U.S. consumers" or "prevents the Chinese government from obtaining U.S. consumer data." You're to ignore that Americans install millions of Chinese-made "smart" TVs, fridges, and poorly secured IOT gadgets on home and business networks with reckless abandon. Or that international corporations not only sell access to consumer data to any nitwit with a nickel, they often leave it unencrypted in the cloud. Or that the U.S. has no privacy law for the internet era, and corporations routinely see performative wrist slaps for privacy and security incompetence.
The idea that Chinese intelligence, with zero scruples and an unlimited budget, "needs" TikTok access to spy on Americans' data in this environment is just silly nonsense. Any yet, here we are.
It's all even more absurd when you consider the scope and complexity of global adtech markets. As Gizmodo's Shoshana Wodinsky recently explored, international adtech is a complex, unaccountable monster. This orgy of consumer tracking, behavioral data, and "anonymized" (read: not actually anonymous at all) datasets is so complex, even folks that cover the sector have a hard time understanding it. Thinking we can control what data the Chinese government is gleaning from this tangled web -- or that even selling TikTok to Microsoft somehow "fixes" anything -- is an act of hubris in full context:
"Over time, what's become very, very clear is that while, say, Google and Facebook and TikTok are ultimately at the whims of local regulators, the same can't be said about the digital Rube Goldberg machine of platforms, subsidiaries and shady third-parties these companies use to churn our data into massive profits. Our current digital economy, to a certain degree, depends on global ties that are built to run far deeper than any ban or buyout could ever hope to touch.
Or, to put it more bluntly: If Trump's real concern is keeping the data of our squeaky clean American phones out of the clutches of that dirty, no-good communist adversary China, then Microsoft buying TikTok won't do shit-our data is making its way from U.S. companies to servers in China constantly, regardless of who owns TikTok."
Thinking a ban of one Chinese teen dancing app addresses any of this is just absurd. Similarly, the idea that our defunded, understaffed, and kneecapped privacy regulators at the FTC can actively track or manage any of this (without serious reform, more staff, and a bigger budget) is equally silly:
As Wodinsky notes, if this market is so large that journalists, experts, and privacy and security regulators can't ferret out where your data winds up and who is actively cashing in on access to it, the idea that banning or selling TikTok is some mystical foil for one of the most powerful intelligence-gathering governments on the planet is a bizarre pipe dream:
"The wonderful world of digital advertising is built on black boxes inside of black boxes inside of black boxes. This means that there's a good chunk of people who work at these companies who likely can't tell you exactly where your name, your phone number, your precise location, or other personal data might actually end up."
And yet if you read numerous press reports and analyst insights into the TikTok fracas, they'll fail utterly to include any of this as essential context, which in turn lets the Trump administration pretend that this political tap dance is actually helpful internet policy.