Congress made the right decision last month when it voted overwhelmingly to require TikTok to divest from China. But there’s more work to be done.
with tremendous ability to shape political discourse, and it intends to sabotage America’s democracy at every turn. Its latest effort, according to a trusted source inside the federal government, comes in the form of a plan for “protecting U.S.That might sound good on the surface, but it raises serious questions about how TikTok defines election “misinformation.” What is considered election “misinformation” is in the eye of the beholder, and we seriously doubt TikTok’s judgment.
During Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019, searches for #hongkong yielded a multiplicity of protest-related content on platforms such as Twitter . But on TikTok, similar searches surfaced what oneTikTok can manually control what “goes viral” on its platform and can manipulate user feeds to favor political narratives that suit its values and interests.
Congress took a crucial first step in forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok, but the transition to a new owner likely won’t take place for at least nine months. Even then, it’s not clear that the new owners, whoever they are, will resist the temptation to wield the app’s awesome power for their own ends.
Given TikTok’s disturbing history and its partnership with overtly partisan interest groups to police speech, further action is needed by Congress and state governments to curtail the platform’s political manipulation ahead of the 2024 election through in-depth investigations and potentially further regulation.
In any event, Americans shouldn’t be using or consulting TikTok in the first place — certainly not for news or information on our election and political process. Anyone who does so is asking to be the victim of propaganda and actual misinformation. Worse still, they’re placing their internet usage and data at the mercy of an untrustworthy entity that is a front for those who have nothing but enmity for our country, our democracy, and our people.
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