Conversation

I wrote a LinkedIn thing but I’m putting it here as well so you don’t have to go there:

The TikTok ban is, more than anything, a protectionist move veiled in national security language. It addressses a privacy concern by banning one service that is not a US-based concern, while not addressing the privacy and security issues that every other social platform (including this one right here) have failed to address on their own adequately. And considering that China managed to hack law enforcement hooks into nearly every telecom service in the US, it’s a bit like closing the door to a barn that has already burned to the ground.

We are in a period of extended remix disinformation, unrestrained personal data harvesting, and algorithmic mass surveillance and manipulation that extends beyond social platforms into internet retail, education, search and as-a-service platforms. Every click, purchase, interaction, and view is being monetized in some way by default. Our ability as individuals to counter this is extremely limited; even when we opt out of data collection, we don’t really opt out of data collection-we just opt out of reaping its “benefits” within the platforms themselves.

Using Privacy Badger from Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is one way to at least staunch some of the privacy bleed. But as we’ve seen, Google, Meta and others keep finding ways to gather data to ‘monetize’ in some way through their browsers and apps.

That data can be used for ill by a variety of players—including cybercriminals who use targeted malicious advertising on websites and search engines to deliver malware. It has been used in the past to target disinformation campaigns and manipulate political discourse.

True free speech is speech without manipulation, and being able to choose which conversations you want to be part of. Shutting down TikTok because of its China ties—an act that the incoming administration will likely seek to reverse in exchange for favors—is not the answer. It’s not even addressing the right question