So what did they do? Push alerts to millions of users telling them of a possible ban and helping them call their representatives to change a political issue’s fortunes.
Oops.
All of a sudden a ton of representatives who were on the fence jumped off and joined the bandwagon.
They could've played ball and not pushed politics and we'd have left them alone to make their money but instead they tried to bite the hand that feeds.
Yes, the power of democracy. People spoke up and prevented a harmful law from being passed - why is TikTok exercising that right, in the same way as Google and Facebook, a problem? It sounds like you want the US to become like the CCP instead of vice versa.
Exactly what their opponents were afraid they had the power to do.
It looks REALLY bad. In this case it wasn’t anything sinister and they were open about it but tactically it was probably a massive mistake.
Also why didn’t they just tell everyone in the US? Why did only certain users get the message? Because of where they lived? Because they were voting age? They also proved they have an ability to target specific people for political action based on some (unknown) criteria.
That also looks horrible and plays right into their opponents hands.
They notified their users that their elected representatives were fast tracking a bill targeted at the service they were using. Negotiated in secret because those representatives knew it would be enormously unpopular with their constituents.
TikTok responded by attempting to manipulate democracy.
They did they very thing the government trying to ban them is scared of. Doesn't seem like a smart move to me, I guess we'll see how it plays outs
I get why they’d want people to contact their representatives.
But they went about it in a very tactless way.
I find it very hard to believe TikTok is doing this being they genuinely want to promote democracy in the US. This threatens to end TikTok's influence over millions of Americans, they have a business/political stake in this. They're encouraging people to contact their representatives, not because it's in the individual's best interest, but because it's in TikTok's best interest. That's why it's manipulative.
Also, I'm of the opinion the foreign-funded propaganda is generally unhealthy for a democracy.
Edit: Just to be clear, I don't really want to ban TikTok. I don't trust TikTok, but I also don't want to increase the federal government's ability to censor what Americans can view. In the process of battling Chinese influence, I don't want the US to become more like China.
I don’t know what the right move for them was. Maybe it was just to say this was happening or link to a new story or something.
But saying it’s a “ban”* and helping people find the number to call their representative went over the line and made them look very bad.
*It’s not strictly a ban, only a ban on Chinese ownership. If an American company took total control they could continue to operate. So calling it a “ban” is a little disingenuous in someways although it’s also a lot easier to say
What frustrates me about this discussion is the way that people take anything TikTok does here and assumes that it's out of evil and malicious intent, with very little proof other than its murky links to China, which feels very Cold War 2.0.
I'm sensitive to your demand for proof, but how much more "proof" do you want? If the PRC wants to manipulate western democracy by mobilizing a force of Gen-Z nuts via messages in their favorite app, they can do it, just like they do domestically.
Democracy is not just voting for someone, a democratic government is intended to be directly influenced by the people continually. It's kind of the whole point of a representative democracy.
Trying to manipulate democracy would be involving actions that aren't part of an accepted democratic process, like telling your supporters to go to assault Capitol Building and them showing up with assault rifles and pressure elected officials
TikTok trying to sway users made a huge mistake.
Could trying to sway users subtly have still been a win in this instance?
I'd think a platform doing manipulation subtly is actually more dangerous, and the bigger potential threat from a platform. Because people being influenced would be less aware of it, and it's much harder for other parties to call out.
(Although, when I look at current TV news and some other outlets, there's such blatant manipulation and dumbing-down, from both political "sides", I wonder how more than a small minority of people can tolerate watching that, much less mimicking it. And calling it out just gets tossed into ineffectual echo-chamber sports-fandom-like noise. So maybe subtle isn't as additionally threatening as I'd been assuming.)
If they had done it subtly, that would have proved that they had the power to do it too but if they weren’t caught it wouldn’t have blown up in their face.
Of course if they were caught it would be an even bigger deal.
Catch 22 for them.
Darwinism.
I thought it was about stealing data?
> Push alerts to millions of users telling them of a possible ban and helping them call their representatives to change a political issue’s fortunes.
Not pushing the alert, would have changed nothing. And to be fair, isn't this how any organization in a democratic country works? Talking to their customers to communicate their problems? Raising awareness, animating people to talk to their local politicians, that's pretty common, isn't it?
Data seems like a sideshow to me. It’s legal and they could just buy it from data brokers anyway. It’s not like the US has any real laws against that.
Political action is a fair response to the bill but they went about it in an incredibly tone deaf way.