EDITORIAL: TikTok Platform's issues are not isolated

The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.
·2 min read

Mar. 30—An estimated 150 million Americans are active on TikTok, and it's a safe bet that few of them regard the videos they create, view and share on the China-based social media site as a danger to national security.

TikTok's popularity poses a significant political obstacle for the China hawks pushing to force ByteDance to sell the platform or be banned in the United States. The app is already forbidden on federal government devices and on the devices owned by the majority of U.S. states.

The major complaints about TikTok are valid. Yes, it is harmful to the mental health of children; it is susceptible to the spread of misinformation; it collects, stores and disseminates private data.

All those complaints apply just as well to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which have found (as talk radio did decades ago) that fanning division and anger is profitable. Indeed, Twitter's current path appears designed to promote misinformation.

Yet few in Congress are demanding action to rein in those American social media giants. (Meta, whose Facebook and Instagram platforms are losing users to TikTok, is actively pushing for a TikTok ban; if you can't beat 'em in the marketplace, ban 'em).

One significant difference, of course, is that TikTok parent ByteDance is a Chinese company, subject to Beijing's dictates. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew last week told a House committee that it would migrate its U.S. data to Oracle servers in this nation. But that hardly protects that information from being accessed by China — or protects the devices owned by Americans from intrusion by China.

Which makes prohibiting TikTok on government devices wise, even necessary. Banning TikTok for the general population is less justifiable.

Congress, and the Biden administration, appears overly focused on the problems posed by a specific, if foreign-controlled, social media platform. Much better would be a push for rigorous standards on data privacy, algorithmic transparency and moderation for all social media, foreign or domestic. But that would probably hit Meta and Twitter in the pocketbook.