{"id":1550081,"date":"2024-03-12T16:17:57","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T16:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/03\/tiktok-ban-israel-gaza-free-speech\/"},"modified":"2024-03-12T17:06:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T17:06:24","slug":"banning-tiktok-is-a-terrible-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/12\/banning-tiktok-is-a-terrible-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Banning TikTok Is a Terrible Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Large numbers of both Republican and Democratic officials, including Joe Biden, are indicating their support of a measure to ban TikTok. It\u2019s a nonsensical idea born of elite mistrust of ordinary people.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n The TikTok logo is displayed outside TikTok offices on March 12, 2024 in Culver City, California. (Mario Tama \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

As outrage at the Israeli war on Gaza and US backing for it continues to grow, US politicians have responded calmly and reasonably with a measure that threads a fine line between advocating for the US government\u2019s position on the war and respecting the intelligence and basic rights of ordinary Americans. <\/p>\n

Just kidding. They\u2019ve put forward an idea that stands to anger large swaths of the public and massively encroach on ordinary Americans\u2019 right to free speech, all while having little to no effect on US voters\u2019 growing repugnance toward Israel\u2019s war: banning TikTok.<\/p>\n

This censorious idea has been pushed<\/a> by conservatives for years and was recently given renewed momentum with a bill set to be voted on in the House this week, and President Joe Biden pledging to sign it into law. In the eyes of the forces backing the measure, banning TikTok in the United States would be an easy way to fix what the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s (ADL) Jonathan Greenblatt referred<\/a> to<\/u> in a leaked phone call the \u201cmajor, major, major generational problem\u201d that the pro-war, pro-Israel side faces, where the divide over US support for Israel \u201cis not left and right, it is young and old\u201d \u2014 a divide that can be seen perhaps most clearly on the video-sharing service.<\/p>\n

Since Israel began its systematic razing of Gaza five months ago, many other pro-Israel voices have insisted that the reason survey<\/a> after poll<\/a> after questionnaire<\/a> shows young people are by far the most unsympathetic to Israel and critical of its war is simply because of TikTok.<\/p>\n

\u201cOct. 7 really opened people\u2019s eyes to what\u2019s happening on TikTok\u201d and its \u201cdifferential treatment of different topics,\u201d Democratic Illinois representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, one of the cosponsors of the ban, recently said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, last November, twenty-five Republican lawmakers signed a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew charging<\/a> that a \u201cdeluge of pro-Hamas content\u201d on the platform \u201cis driving hateful antisemitic rhetoric and violent protests on campuses across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calling for a ban, Republican Missouri senator Josh Hawley claimed<\/a> there\u2019s a \u201cubiquity of anti-Israel content on TikTok,\u201d while Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio, who has introduced his own TikTok ban bill into the Senate, called it<\/a> \u201ca tool China uses to spread propaganda to Americans\u201d that was now \u201cbeing used to downplay Hamas terrorism,\u201d among other<\/a> Republican senators. Republican Wisconsin representative Mike Gallagher, the other cosponsor of the House ban, charged<\/a> that TikTok was what was giving young Americans \u201cthe raw news\u201d that gave them an \u201cupside-down world view\u201d to root \u201cagainst a key American ally.\u201d<\/p>\n

As on immigration<\/a>, the White House has accepted the Republicans\u2019 framing of this issue. A spokesperson for Biden\u2019s National Security Council recently told<\/a> Rolling Stone<\/em> that TikTok poses a threat to US national security \u201cthrough the manipulation by foreign powers of Americans\u2019 views and beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Republican-led push for censorship has been reinforced by behind-the-scenes pressure from pro-war celebrities<\/a>, Zionist groups<\/a> like the ADL, and tech executives<\/a> like the former executive of dating app Tinder Jeff Morris Jr, who is \u201cconvinced<\/a>\u201d TikTok \u201cis the reason we\u2019re losing the information war with high school & college students.\u201d All of them have pressed TikTok to censor more pro-Palestine content.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,\u201d Borat<\/em> actor Sacha Baron Cohen told TikTok executives on one of these calls. Former Will and Grace<\/em> actress Debra Messing pushed them to simply bar the phrase \u201cfrom the river to the sea\u201d from the platform entirely. For start-up founder Anthony Goldbloom, who organized the come-to-Jesus meeting with forty tech leaders, the fact that pro-Palestinian content was so popular on the platform \u201cjust seemed crazy\u201d and was simply inexplicable.<\/p>\n

This panic has mingled with the escalating and increasingly hysterical<\/a> anti-China fervor<\/a> building in Washington, with Republicans viewing TikTok\u2019s supposed promotion of anti-Israel content as part of a grand Chinese conspiracy to \u201cbrainwash\u201d young Americans and sow political discord within the United States. The result is the House bill, which effectively gives ByteDance, TikTok\u2019s partly Chinese-headquartered parent company, a less-than-six-month ultimatum: either sell the app, or be booted off US app stores.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they pass it, I\u2019ll sign it,\u201d said Biden, whose press secretary called the bill \u201cimportant\u201d and something \u201cwe welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not mince words about what this is: an extreme attempt at state censorship whose aim is to shut down Americans\u2019 ability to dissent from currently unfolding US foreign policy, driven explicitly by elite fear at a rapidly growing antiwar protest movement that has largely succeeded<\/a> in persuading the US public.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

A Classic Case of Wartime Censorship<\/h2>\n \n

Pro-war voices\u2019 certainty that simply banning TikTok will halt the Israeli war\u2019s growing unpopularity with voters smacks of a combination of wishful thinking and moral deficiency. Because they are personally unbothered by the hideous images and news of human slaughter emerging daily from Gaza, the pro-censorship side assumes that only mass hypnosis could explain the outpouring of basic humanity triggered in response. Personally numb to this horror and having lost the battle for public opinion, the war\u2019s supporters are desperate for \u201cone weird trick\u201d to swing mass opinion back their way \u2014 and, like all warmonger<\/a>s<\/a> through history, they\u2019ve settled on curtailing people\u2019s ability to freely speak and share ideas as the way to do it.<\/p>\n

But the irony is that banning TikTok, as authoritarian and menacing as it would certainly be, won\u2019t do what they want it to. The fact is that the same chasm in popularity of pro-Palestinian versus pro-Israel content can be seen<\/a> across all social media platforms, even those that have a history<\/a> of censoring pro-Palestinian speech. While there\u2019s no doubt social media plays a role here, by letting internet users bypass traditional media gatekeepers and get and share news about the war from independent outlets, it also reflects a very real generational divide on, and a decline in support for, Israel that existed<\/a> long before<\/a> TikTok came along, and whose roots are deeper than any social media platform.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean this move doesn\u2019t pose a threat to Americans\u2019 basic freedoms, though. Gallagher claims<\/a> the move isn\u2019t really a ban, because \u201cas long as ByteDance no longer owns the company, TikTok can continue to survive\u201d \u2014 though, to be clear, he also flatly said it was \u201ctime to ban TikTok\u201d a few months before introducing the bill.<\/p>\n

But we also know what Washington\u2019s plans are once ownership of the platform passes to hands more favorable to US politicians. Documents leaked last year revealed<\/a> the Biden administration had demanded from TikTok that, in exchange for being allowed to keep operating in the United States, it hand the US government total access to its users\u2019 data and other information, control over its privacy and content moderation policies, and even the power to temporarily shut down the platform \u2014 in other words, the exact powers of \u201cpropaganda and censorship\u201d that China hawks complain Beijing has over TikTok\u2019s content.<\/p>\n

This is the latest iteration of the undercurrent of contempt toward ordinary voters that has become central to political elites\u2019 worldview, especially since 2016. For those first few years, the consensus in Washington was that if the American people held any views contrary to their elected overlords \u2014 whether opposing fracking<\/a>, being critical of Wall Street<\/a>, aversion<\/a> to war and police brutality, or voting for Trump<\/a> \u2014 it had to be because they were tricked into it by Russia over Facebook. The push to ban TikTok shows this mindset is alive and well.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Political Malpractice<\/h2>\n \n

The Republican enthusiasm for this isn\u2019t surprising. Aside from a brief period on a few select issues, the Right has always<\/a> been<\/a> by far<\/a> the most<\/a> censorious<\/a> force<\/a> in US politics, demanding the power to stop people from being able to say, think, feel, or live how they choose, often on the same spurious grounds of protecting national security.<\/p>\n

For the Biden White House, the impetus is a little more confusing. The president is currently heading into a reelection campaign as the most unpopular leader in nearly seventy years<\/a>, in no small part thanks to his dismal standing among voters under thirty-five years old \u2014 tens of millions of whom are active users of TikTok. Biden has already angered the left-leaning young voters with his unconditional support for Israel\u2019s war; now he\u2019s toying with alienating even the apolitical members of this cohort, who will wake up one day to find they\u2019ve lost access to their favorite app because of something the president did \u2014 and at the same time that his election opponent has backtracked<\/a> and now publicly opposes<\/em> a ban, and when public support for the move has plummeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are layers upon layers to the nonsensical and politically irrational nature of this idea. The good news is that even if it passes the House this week, it still has an uphill road in the Senate. The bad news is that, unlike this bill, the bipartisan hysteria and antipopulism among the political elite that it reflects is very much here to stay.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As outrage at the Israeli war on Gaza and US backing for it continues to grow, US politicians have responded calmly and reasonably with a measure that threads a fine line between advocating for the US government\u2019s position on the war and respecting the intelligence and basic rights of ordinary Americans. Just kidding. They\u2019ve put [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1445,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1550082,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550081\/revisions\/1550082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}