A colleague recently sent me a TikTok she thought I’d find interesting. I clicked the link but immediately regretted it. I quickly cleared my browser history but felt it was too late and that the Chinese government was probably in my phone for good now.
As a former U.S. diplomat, I might be unusually sensitive to that possibility, having served in places where we took for granted that foreign state actors were listening in. But the combination of geopolitical rivalry, China’s surveillance state and the viral power of social media does feel potent.
If you’re reading this column, you may not be one of the 100 million American users of TikTok, the wildly popular video-sharing social media app that some lawmakers want to ban nationally. About 60% of American TikTok users are under the age of 24, and 76% are younger than 44.
But the debate over TikTok still matters to us all because at its core is the bigger question of how, or whether, our open society can adapt to mitigate the risks of algorithm manipulation and mass hoarding of private data.
TikTok raises specific concerns because of China. It’s owned by a Chinese company subject to Chinese national security laws that allow the government to demand its data. There’s also the fear that the Chinese state could use the app to spread propaganda and influence its users in ways that harm U.S. democracy and national interests.
After all, foreign adversaries have used social media to sway U.S. public opinion in nefarious ways before. The extreme level of control and influence that the Chinese Communist Party has over Chinese businesses amps up the risk of social media’s reach.
In ongoing negotiations with the U.S. government, the company that owns TikTok has proposed elaborate measures to ensure that U.S. user data does not end up in the hands of the Chinese state. But this is happening in such a heated geopolitical atmosphere that the outcome will likely be swayed more by politics than actual risk calculation. However well intended, no security mechanisms proposed by a Chinese company will likely persuade enough political actors that it can be trusted with this level of access to American minds.
Wherever this debate ends up, however, Americans have a bigger question to answer: Why are we so worried about the Chinese government manipulating social media but so nonchalant about Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and other corporate interests doing the same for profit?
It’s a question I ask myself frequently. Even as I steer clear of TikTok, I still use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, though I know the parent companies are using my data and algorithms to try to manipulate my behavior for corporate gain. These businesses determine what news we see, influence what we buy and frequently affect our opinions, views and attitudes in ways of which we aren’t even aware.
The risk with TikTok is real, but American social media companies pose real risk, too.
Tools to address that risk butt up against the open society that we treasure. An open society’s success has always relied on the idea that we can combat bad information and misinformation with the truth, promoted by facts and better arguments. But the world of algorithms, “alternative facts” and other viral virtual weapons in the hands of bad actors begs the question: Is an open society equipped to handle a technologically advanced war of words and video? Does truth have a fair fight in an open forum today?
This question is a profoundly difficult one for the United States because we prize free speech and openness with an almost cultlike commitment that makes regulation unseemly.
Many governments have no problem banning social media apps to limit the information their citizens can access or cutting off tools that risk revealing alarming truths. Americans find that easy to criticize, but even our European allies, who also value openness, already embrace guard rails on that openness in the interest of privacy and public safety.
What makes us fear the slippery slope of regulating access to information is already emerging in American politics, as the far right clamps down on information in defense of its culture wars. Book bans and political interference in educational curriculum are only degrees away from prohibiting political opposition outright.
The question the government is grappling with today then is what can we do to block misinformation and disinformation that these social media tools spread without impeding the legitimate information people have access to?
I hope our government brings an equal level of scrutiny to all social media apps as it does to those associated with China, but I also hope it pursues regulation with ample oversight, transparency and limitation.
We must take great care with what power we grant the government to limit public access to information and expression. Even if you trust that the government today has the public’s best interest at heart, the doors we open now will be open to anyone who ends up in power in the future.
Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior fellow on U.S. foreign policy with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”
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