The US House of Representatives finally – FINALLY – voted through additional military aid for beleaguered Ukraine. Unfortunately, the bill also included aid to Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing. You know how US politicians like baking poison and idiocy into the cookie dough so that even the most sure-fire bills become a moral compromise. It’s almost like the legislative forces in the US are allergic to just doing unambiguous good.
Oh, and also, a ban on TikTok was included in the bill. Like chocolate chips.
Let us – first and foremost – ask ourselves “why”. It started with Trump’s nationalistic worrying about Chinese influence. While the Orange Hydra started his presidency getting chummy with both Jinping and NK’s Kim, those relationships lasted about as long as a spray tan. So when Trump couldn’t sell his presidency on “fixing” the US relationship with China, he elected instead to demonize them as part of a nationalistic campaign.
The Republican Cult of Trump is thus out for blood with China (just like the Democrats are out for blood with Iran). And banning Chinese-owned TikTok is one front of that war. Because they’re concerned that US user data is up for grabs for the Chinese government, so unless TikTok sells it’s Chinese shares to US corporations, a ban will be in place in 9-12 months.
… this is one of those things where only half the truth’s being sold by either side on the subject …
The Reality: Most social media sells its data to whoever wants to pay the most for it. Same’s true about Facebook and Whatsapp and Instagram et.al.. That’s the business model. If you don’t buy the service, then as a content creator you are the product. That’s how Trump got elected to begin with – by Facebook et. al. selling your data to campaign organizers.
It is also true that the Chinese government can seize corporate assets in China at a whim. They’ve done it before, so it stands to reason that they’ll do so again. It is also true that the TikTok owner ByteDance runs a very different TikTok domestically than it does internationally. At home, TikTok premiers science and education. Globally, TikTok spoon-feeds users vapid dances and cat videos. TikTok is a platform which selectively makes one population smarter and the others dumber. TikTok is a psyops app.
The Hypocrisy: Ever since the anti-Trust binge back in the early 20th century, the US government has acted decidedly pro-corpo, with very few actual infringements on monopolies. Sure – they sometimes drag Mark Zuckerberg or Elon in front of Congress to sweat a little, but they do very little to challenge the tech industry. So to single out a social media platform, not for what incriminating damage it does but rather that it doesn’t serve specifically American billionaires, is not just a little hypocritical.
Same goes for the aggressive bitchery which TikTok’s launched to combat the looming ban. Since the ides of March, TikTok’s spent 5 million USD on TV ads, hoping to mobilize the some 170 million US users of the platform into political action, rallying around the idea of “infringement of their First Amendment Rights”. As if a parasitic social media app, which like a leech thrives on the people using it, was the foundation of public discourse. If you’re so concerned about your right to free speech and expression, go grab a pallet and have a soliloquy in the town square. It’s not like there’s an avalanche of cognitive value on social media anyway.
The US gunning for TikTok for its ill effects on the population is a valid concern veiling jingoistic protectionism of the same evils. And if you’re one of the many content creators who have hitched your entire identity, value, and financial future on sucking the dick of one of the Seven Devils of social media, you really only have yourself to blame that it’s not turning out to be a sustainable business prospect (says the man with literary delusions who’ve started streaming on Twitch).
Most social media is a poison to body and mind. Shooting those corpo parasites out of the sky is a public service. Bring out the fucking flak cannons, I say! Dakka, dakka! But don’t discriminate.
And if you think that your “free speech” will ever be given to you by a corporate algorithm, then you must not be very clear on that “free” part of it…
/Sebastian Lindberg 23/4-2024
WastedWords 