Wednesday Mishmash: All About TikTok

TikTok Lays the Bait

It’s weird to see the left and right divided against their respective selves and weird D&R alliances formed in either support or opposition of the TikTok bill. Some claim that the bill is an affront to free speech, an argument I don’t accept. I don’t think behavior best categorized as espionage is protected under free speech, further, it doesn’t make sense to argue opposition on a free speech basis considering it isn’t the content the bill takes issue with, but rather the data mining and surveillance.

My hesitation with the bill centers around the extent of the powers held by the chief executive. I know the bill doesn’t verbatim extend such authority, but then again, that authority wasn’t extended to the admin under the Patriot Act when its’a activist DOJ began classifying outspoken school board parents as “domestic terrorists.” You can’t blame millions of Americans for concern — Americans who for the past decade watched government shape, through abuse, power it didn’t have into one it did and wielded against political dissenters.

That said, I’m also suspicious of TikTok’s sudden interest in free speech, a freedom foreign to those living in the country of its parent company. I’m wary of having a communist-controlled entity weaponizing American patriotism to empower its own continued surveillance.