Should the US make a Chinese company sell TikTok?

This is a very close call. And as someone whom the White House specifically targeted for my social media posts, I have a unique perspective on Biden Administration claims of "disinformation."

I can’t stand TikTok.

My kids use it, though I wish they wouldn’t. (If you wonder why they do despite my objections… recall I am not their only parent.)

If you don’t know: TikTok is a social media app that serves an endless stream of user-generated short videos. It’s proven hugely successful, becoming the only real challenger to YouTube and Instagram. Its secret, its evil genius, is the way it largely removes conscious choice from its users.

Just download the app and the video drip begins.

Based on your response to each video, TikTok serves you more videos it believes you will like. Its guesses, now refined off trillions of user views, will likely be right. As TikTok itself explains, “even when two users follow the same set of creators, each feed will rank and serve content in a way that is tailored to how you use TikTok.”

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(No TikTokers were harmed in the making of this article.)

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The brevity of the videos mean they inevitably prioritize feeling and humor over complexity in storytelling or character. And they are just as corrupting for nonfiction storytelling - that is, journalism.

If long-form video is a meal, TikTok is a cracker. You reach for another, and another, until the box is empty and you’ve gained two pounds. I’ve been watching videos of a Chihuahua running around as a guy chants “I am strong! I am fierce! I am Chi-wah-wah!” over and over for an hour, what is happening to me?

The algorithm that TikTok uses to present videos is intentionally opaque, except that it is designed to keep people staring at the screen as long as possible. Of all the apps ruining our ability to think and interact with each other, TikTok is the worst.

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(Look closely and you’ll see the devil’s horns.

Kidding! I think…)

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But the current fight over TikTok has less to do with what TikTok is than who controls it. Because ByteDance, the company that makes TikTok, is — do I even have to say it, do I have to say the C-word? — well, it’s Chinese.

In 2020, Democrats and the media essentially barred anyone from discussing the possibility the novel coronavirus had leaked from a Chinese lab. Doing so was a sign of anti-Asian prejudice, they said.

But we’re not in 2020 anymore. A Democrat is President, not that naughty Donald Trump, who had the nerve to call a virus that emerged from China the “China virus.”

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(So many experts, so many warnings.)

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Thus reporters can once again admit the People’s Republic of China doesn’t always tell the truth about exactly what’s happening inside its borders. Or outside them.

TikTok has over 150 million American users - around half of all Americans - and is ubiquitous among people under 30. It hoovers up data about those people. It has been accused for years of presenting “misinformation” or “disinformation” on subjects important to the Chinese government, including Taiwan and Tibet.

The United States Army became concerned enough about TikTok by late 2019 that it banned the app from all military-owned devices as a threat. By 2023 that ban had been expanded to all devices owned by government agencies or their contractors.

So.

Now that we all agree China may not be the best friend the United States of America has ever had, what - if anything - do we do about the fact ByteDance owns TikTok?

This question has exploded since last week, when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to make ByteDance sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company within six months - or face a ban of the app in the United States.

But the answer is not as simple as it first seems.

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