The TikTok story, which is arguably almost over, offers many lessons for policymakers. Voters teach.
Americans have shown that they won’t take national security threats at face value. They want the details. Lawmakers reportedly gathered for a top-secret briefing on the risks posed by TikTok before voting in favor of the bill back in March. At the time, the protestors outside Capitol Hill who opposed the ban were not made privy to its findings.
Confidentiality has consequences. This week we saw that Americans are willing to directly snub lawmakers’ rhetoric about Chinese risk by migrating from US-based and operated TikTok to the fully Chinese-run lifestyle app Xiaohongshu (known in the US as “Red Note”).
Policymakers would also likely be assessing how fed up Americans are with homegrown Big Tech. As a post by user Candacce put it: “I’d rather watch language I don’t understand than use a social media [platform] owned by Mark Zuckerberg. “
Hypocrisy may also have played a role in American users’ decision not to fill TikTok’s void with domestic apps. Many have astutely argued that Americans would benefit far more from a knowledge privacy law than from a ban on TikTok. The second solution without the first is naturally interpreted as disingenuous: many might deduce that the government cares enough to make its knowledge inaccessible to its geopolitical rival, but national corporations would likely object. it. Boycotting Meta is a way to get revenge.
If enacted, data protections could extend beyond social media and into the U.S. drone market, an area lawmakers are also keen to restrict Chinese firms’ access to. The Commerce Department is considering a rule that would ban Chinese drones (industry comments are due on March 4).
In a way, the proposed drone rule is at least more consistent in its logic than the TikTok ban, because it targets all drones of Chinese origin rather than one company. Since China’s DJI dominates the U.S. drone market, legislation that targets one firm is plausible; in fact, a bill that does just that was introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik in April and is currently under consideration.
Now, some lawmakers are backtracking, arguing that TikTok wants more time to locate a buyer. Its replacement of the center reflects the annoying practical hurdles of suddenly cutting off access to a popular platform. While it is not as difficult as the 170 million US-based TikTok users In the United States, the American drone network is equally enthusiastic and largely united in the assertion that there is no option comparable to DJI for the customer market. Even the New York Times Wirecutter recommends DJI.
The current and future chaos of those movements is only part of the explanation why bans based on corporations and nationalities are irrelevant. Rather than taking limited action against Chinese drones, for example, policymakers have a duty to provide Americans with coverages that are compatible with today’s much broader technological reality. Data coverage laws, which exist in the European Union and, ironically, in China, provide an imperfect but starting point.
If lawmakers continue to shove underlying issues aside in favor of politically expedient anti-China bans, then they will keep failing to convince the public they are acting in its best interests.
Case in point: Reports recommend that TikTok users moved to Xiaohongshu most commonly out of spite. Their presence there might be short-lived, but it clearly demonstrates how many Americans (those who live outside the fiercely anti-China bubble of Washington, D. C. ) feel about the administration’s decision to prioritize its partying with China over their rights. as consumers.
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