The TikTok Ban

Congress is looking to ban TikTok but is that the right course of action?

"It's certainly possible that the road to hell to some degree is paved with good intentions - but the road to hell is mostly paved with bad intentions." - Elon Musk

Like many I have struggled with the question of whether TikTok should be banned. I fully acknowledge that TikTok can be at heart a Chinese data-mining operation and is a sieve for anyone’s personal data. That is why I don’t have the app on my phone or PC and even avoid TikTok videos when possible. But I hesitate giving government that sort of power.

TikTok is clearly a security risk and you’d have to be living under a rock not to acknowledge that China is both our biggest competitor and enemy. TikTok is a not so subtle tool of theirs to subvert our youth. There’s a reason TikTok in China is mostly educational video while here it is geared toward the frivolous.

There a reason American companies like Wells Fargo have banned TikTok from being on any work phones. There’s also a reason why the CCP bans American social media platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp. and even YouTube in China. They know what could be done with these platforms if allowed.

The Chinese Communists used children to denouncing their parents during the cultural Revolution to gain and hold power. Today they are using TikTok to get America’s youth to denounce the American values of their parents’ generation. The app is so nefarious that using it not only puts your own data at risk but also that of anyone in your network.

In the past I suggested that using TikTok was a test of a person’s intelligence and with the prohibition of using the “R-word” that TikTok could be substituted instead. For example, “You never go full TikTok.” That obviously wasn’t the right approach. But I don’t think it was far from the truth.

Opinion, though, is clearly swinging from being rightfully afraid of the CCP and the dangers of TikTok to being more afraid of the over-reach of a growingly totalitarian government of our own. Who in their right mind would trust this sort of power to someone like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Mitch McConnell? Yet that is what a TikTok ban is asking us to do.

Nancy Pelosi explained, “This isn’t an attempt to ban TikTok, it’s an attempt to make TikTok better.” They want CCP ownership gone and American ownership that they approve of and control in its place. Forgive the phrase but that’s full TikTok right there.

Any time you are asked to chose between the lesser of two evils - you are still choosing an evil. In this case both TikTok and this bill before Congress to ban TikTok are evil. The intention to ban TikTok may be pure but this bill before Congress surely isn’t.

In the meantime - don’t have TikTok on your phones or those of anyone you love and for the love of God please don’t ever use TikTok as a trusted news source.