TIKTOK EMERGES AS SILICON VALLEY SCAPEGOAT
TIKTOK offers Silicon Valley the opportunity to wrap themselves in the flag, expand market dominance and evade accountability amid US anti-China panic
TIKTOK may be wildly popular with Gen Z, but this won’t protect it from lawmakers in London or Washington who are being urged by diverse interest groups with a shared goal see it banned.
US big tech
The video sharing app TIKTOK may not be the competitor Silicon Valley wants, but it represents a perfect foil. The Chinese video sharing platform has proven a troublesome rival for the likes of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and others who have been unable to compete. These American social media tech titans have been fighting a losing battle as TIKTOK hoovers up the eyeballs of the younger tech savvy generations.
Furthermore, the fact that Bytedance -TIKTOK app owners - is Chinese presents an opportunity for Mark Zuckerberg and others distract from their own woeful failures to adequately address content moderation on their own platforms. Suddenly Mr Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley can wrap themselves in the US flag and up the patriotic rhetoric. In the meantime they wave the political mobs gaze over to TIKTOK, which presents a juicy target for popular ire with big tech and social media.
Now yes, there are legitimate issues around data protection given the national security laws and share ownership of Bytedance, based in Beijing. But nevertheless, it is clear TIKTOK is being singled out by politicians on the Washington DC hill in a way no western (especially American) owned firm ever would or had been.
Suddenly Mark Zuckerberg, who had been under immense pressure back home from 2016 onwards has the perfect get out of jail free card. Unhappy with how Facebook has handled selling user data? Still pissed off about Facebooks involvement in Russian disinformation ads? Well at least it isn’t TIKTOK…right?
Twitter equally is likely having a field day with all of the overly heightened scrutiny TIKTOK is receiving. If the concern is about censorship, why only worry about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Last I checked Twitter was censoring US newspapers during presidential elections for engaging in accurate reporting about Joe Biden.
But Democrats on the hill (and their financial donors in Silicon Valley) only have eyes for TIKTOK. The singling out of the Chinese owned app has the strong stench of opportunism by US rivals eager to dispense with a rival outcompeting them.
National security state
At the same time as Silicon Valley titans can distract from their own failures by pointing at TIKTOK, US national security movers and shakers think it’s a good opportunity to erode Beijings rising power.
Ever since the advent of the internet, the US has been comfortably enjoying the dominance and control that comes from having so many big tech firms being American. The EU has tried and failed to figure out how to encourage European based big tech alternatives to the likes of Google, Facebook etc, to no avail. But suddenly China has arrived on the scene, a rising global actor with its own tech eco-system outside US national security control. What’s worse, these Chinese tech firms like Baidu (Chinese alternative to Google) or WeChat (Chinese WhatsApp) are in many ways more innovative than their US counterparts. WeChat for example had pioneered the concept of paying for everything by scanning QR codes via the app long before Apple got in on the act. I should know, I lived out in China when it was commonplace to leave home without ever needing your wallet at a time when friends back home were still anticipating the arrival of the touchless, cashless, society.
If you listen to Professor John Meirshiemer of Chicago University, Beijing and Washington are on an inevitable great power clash. According to him - the leading scholar on hard realism in international relations theory - a Thucydides trap is inevitable. As the established great power (and global hegemon) faces challenge by rising upstart, a clash is inevitable.
It is in this context, where the US is insisting on unleashing a national security Cold War with the Middle Kingdom that TIKTOK arises. To US policy makers, advisors and politicians in Congress anything that could conceivably benefit Beijing in tech, military and security realms must be either brought to heel or ejected from the US led global eco-system.
Put simply TIKTOKs real crime is being Beijing based rather than American based. US politicians have already started to suggest a prohibition on TIKTOK isn’t necessary provided its Chinese shareholders are forced to sell…to Americans. Bytedance app has become the latest tragic pawn in the great game of superpowers as an insecure Washington insists on tech decoupling across the world.
Are there legitimate questions around user data privacy with TIKTOK? Sure, but let’s not pretend these are not all pressing concerns for all of the platforms American rivals. I for one refuse to join in on US-UK policy maker hypocrisies amid the sudden sinophobic mood du jour. Nor am I prepared to see TIKTOK singled out by US big tech eager to escape accountability for their own long running failures. If we great power considerations to influence a global approach to regulation of social media, we will all be the losers in the end.
My work is entirely reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber
Alternatively why not make a one-off donation? All support is appreciated