from the moral-panic-party dept
Insurrectionist sprinter Josh Hawley has joined the rising refrain of GOP politicians who’ve spent years doing jack shit about U.S. shopper privateness abuses, and now need to faux that banning a single app — TikTok — will defend American customers from an issue they themselves created.
Hawley, who additionally enjoys pretending that he cares about stuff like antitrust reform and monopoly energy, insists {that a} TikTok ban is important as a result of he simply cares so much about kids’ privacy and mental health:
“TikTok is China’s backdoor into Individuals’ lives. It threatens our kids’s privateness in addition to their psychological well being,” he mentioned on Twitter. “Now I’ll introduce laws to ban it nationwide.”
The issue, as we observe each time GOP FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr places on the same efficiency, is that these guys have spent their complete careers fighting against meaningful privacy and security standards, creating the very drawback they’re now pretending to deal with.
They oppose privateness laws of any form. They oppose holding corporations and executives accountable for privateness abuses. They oppose preventing corruption. They oppose increasing psychological well being care. And so they struggle tooth and nail to make sure that privateness regulators on the FTC routinely lack the employees, sources, or authority to police unhealthy actors in adtech/telecom/apps constantly at any scale.
That has resulted in a parade of corporations over-collecting shopper information after which promoting entry to it to any imbecile with a nickel. As such, banning TikTok does nothing. You’ve singled out one firm in an ocean of worldwide corporations and providers all doing successfully the identical factor. And the Chinese language authorities should purchase all of this information from a rotating crop of dodgy data brokers.
The motivation right here isn’t shopper privateness or nationwide safety. The Trumpist GOP hasn’t proven itself to be constant sufficient politically, ethically, or intellectually to deserve having any of their feedback or proposals taken at face worth.
I nonetheless assume the GOP hyperventilation over TikTok is, as most issues the fashionable GOP does, a dumb efficiency. It agitates a xenophobic base and creates the flimsy impression the GOP is “doing one thing about China.” And, I’d all however assure the GOP-coddling execs at Fb are working extra time behind the scenes to spread moral panic about a competitor.
However, extra realistically I feel, this hyperventilation over TikTok nudges the ball towards the GOP’s final objective: forcing the sale of the most well-liked video app in America to one among their cronyistic BFFs. At which level, mentioned BFFs will have interaction in all the identical (or worse) conduct TikTok’s now engaged in.
Trump clumsily gave this sport away some time again when he tried to dump the corporate to his Republican-allied buddies at Walmart and Oracle. I nonetheless assume that’s the final word objective right here. And never as a result of the GOP cares about nationwide safety and privateness, however as a result of some wealthy people are of their ear drooling over the potential for proudly owning TikTok’s rising advert income.
Filed Below: bans, china, gop, josh hawley, mental health, privacy, republican, security, social media, surveillance
Corporations: tiktok
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