India's TikTok Ban Is a Cautionary Tale for the U.S.
wsj.com
wsj.com
In the Indian context, their TikTok ban is adjacent to a wide variety of internet censorship targeting the incumbent government's political detractors. It's gone to the extent of even regional internet shutdowns. I can't help but thinking this all functions as a slippery slope: the more people tolerate temporary emergency measures, the more they become permanent, and pervasive—like India today. Censorship is an attractively abusable power.
It's a cautionary tale from more angles than the WSJ article considers.
Nothing like freedom of a speech, government oversight etc. etc. the article is trying to portray.
You're free to buy the party line but at least question whether the reasoning makes any sense. Does banning a handful of apps while increasing Chinese investments and imports really aling with the official stand that this was a retaliatory action?
The nasty influence of TikTok outside China has been very clear for a long time. This is part of modern warfare, establishment is only really slow to process this fact. Also because of the misplaced idea that a democratic constitution with a rule of law is something that magically was always there and will forever be there, even if we sit passively down and see people rising that promise to break that constitution down.
Both Google and Meta are in cahoots (tacit compliance) with the Government after they were put through the ban hammer: https://www.zdnet.com/article/india-oks-censoring-facebook-g...
Same for Blackberry: https://theworld.org/dispatch/india/100831/blackberry-resear...
> Nothing like freedom of a speech, government oversight etc. etc. the article is trying to portray.
There's not much freedom of speech in India: Only to an extent you don't ruffle any features and/or aren't influential enough to effect any outcome. Besides, the society itself enforces a crude form of censorship on whatever is taboo or controversial or fringe.
Freedom of communication is freedom to express oneself for individual humans. It is not the right for a totalitarian state to promote itself and weaken democracies.
TikTok works completely different in China vs other countries. Outside of China we have to deal with a highly addictive algo that promotes content of extreme right nuts, anti-vaccination hustlers, and content that over paints any negative information about China.
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Totalitarian states fear their constituents, as they could rise to take their destiny in their own hands. A rule based order and the existence of successful democracies are always a threat to any dictator circle, because their iron fist is fragile.
Authoritarians have been relentlessly strengthening their fists as technology (dogs) gets increasingly good at herding the masses (sheeps).
And with all surveillance tech they still fear the masses. During the very rigid covid lockdowns in China people started to become more actively frustrated, prompting Xi to finally reverse his policies.
But the biggest threat to dictatorships is their own organization, as power transfer is often chaotic and violent. The workings of those states are best compared to maffia power dynamics.
Here's a video about the differences:
TikTok in China versus the United States | 60 Minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY
Douyin is much healthier. Chinese children cannot use Douyin for more than 40 min a day, and it promotes positive content like science experiments you can do at home.
American kids can use TikTok as much as they want, and so are addicted. I don't use it, but I'm almost certain it doesn't just show prosocial educational content to kids, but mostly mindless entertainment and influencer ads.
The result is the most popular career Chinese kids saw they want to grow up to be astronauts, but American kids want to be social media influences.
Moreover, this is always a speculative argument. There is no direct evidence I'm aware of that TikTok’s content is directly controlled by the CCP. If you can’t prove it with a paper trail, you basically have carte blanche to censor software from any country you happen to dislike.
it's the substance of the content on TikTok that's the issue. If TikTok was seen as wholesome and promoting education in children, which it could, then we'd be having a different discussion, but the underlying belief, that there's a guiding hand on their content algorithm to make the United States dumber and more divided is the problem.
Of course, capitalism's job is to sell you more crap, so Facebook's algorithm is "benign" in comparison.
If HN was under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and its algorithms and moderation were manipulated in order to influence the narrative on China, then absolutely yes HN should be banned completely. Hostile foreign powers do not have any right to publish content within our borders.
Fuck them.
It was meant to be rhetorical now - as the USSR did not have TV or radio stations in the US (but, yes, you could get USSR newspapers). Differentiating between different "attack vectors" isn't new.
Imagine if the U.S. banned a Chinese book series because we were concerned it would "undermine our institutions and society". Does that sound like a free country?
From recent reports that's apparently most, if not all, of them.
As a quick follow up query, can Chinese, UK, Australian, etc. companies buy up data on US citizens from brokers? Is that OK, it's probably for business reasons after all .. or friendly five eyes cross border mutual spying to take the stink off.
Liberal democracy is not something you are, it is something you do.
It is the sum set of beliefs, actions, and understandings of the country that results in the state of its governance.
Freedom is not an inevitable result of "being" a democracy.
Freedom is an aggregate result of the way individuals act.
> China blocks the world-wide internet because it follows a totalitarian ideology.
What you might not have considered is that if a foreign power is able to influence your fellow citizens, those fellow citizens might be weaponized against you. Before America was a republic it was part of a monarchy and individual citizens became convinced it was worth fighting to change. That was a good change, but citizens might just as easily be convinced that maybe fast results and less bureaucracy and rules are what we need and it's worth putting a strongman into power for faster results: https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy
Freedom is also the freedom to be ignorant. What happens if too many people are ignorant?
Freedom is also the freedom to do the wrong thing. What happens if too many people do the wrong thing?
Freedom is not a pure concept synonymous with "good." Freedom can bend, but it can also break.
In my opinion, banning foreign websites/apps is just as bad as banning foreign literature.
Even without blocking, countries could ask to seize operation and block them from accepting payment effectively killing it.
Just pass a law of automatic recipricol action for any country. If any country bans "X category" then ban anything coming FROM that country with the same category. If China wants tiktok to operate in the US then they must allow twitter, facebook, and all of the other applications to operate within China. That's the entire point of globalism. It's not a one way street.
Trade restrictions are usually levied reciprocally, and trade agreements made to enforce equal market access or even outcomes. (E.g. you can sell Japanese cars in the US if Japan makes those cars with US steel ).
Unless you're freeloading off of public and open wifi networks, every single person in America is paying someone (who reserves the right to refuse service to anyone) for the privilege of accessing the internet.
Unless you're freeloading off of public or open wifi networks, you are paying someone for the privilege to access the internet on their terms. The US government couldn't care less one way or another whether you have internet.
Internet access is not a right. It could be in another century or two like how the telephone turned out, but we aren't there yet and we shouldn't speak of it as such.
Why is it different now?
South Front and Strategic Culture are two such examples.
Russia Today etc are not reachable from most EU countries.
That's total bullshit, and if you don't know it you have your head stuck in the sand. There are all kinds of things that are censored, usually for legitimate reasons.
Nothing will happen to your TikTok access if it's sold to an acceptable buyer. It's fine for the US to ban it if that doesn't happen, just like it's fine for the US to ban some Chinese company per-positioning antiaircraft missiles and tanks on US property that it happens to own.
I suggest you focus your efforts on ByteDance to encourage a sale.
India did it as a kneejerk response to the Doklam border incident of 2020. When you don't intend a full scale war,the other recourse is to hurt China economically. I distinctly remember the wave that followed of boycotting Chinese goods as much as possible. TikTok is the outcome of that.
While it doesn't do much politically, the ban was to hurt Bytedance. When 80-100 million people go dark on a certain social media platform, those numbers don't look good. When Bytedance wants MAU stats to leverage against the next expansion loans or merger (possibly), this could hurt them. Or simply revenue from ads. With the US it is pure political influence on the sly which the government is afraid of. Indians are tough audience to sway that way from my experience.
You underestimate the power of propoganda. The fact that you think the tiktok ban was in anyway related to the attack or even if was, it served as an commensurate retaliation for the attack just proves this.
Let me show the political influencing landscape in brief: I have lived in both the aforementioned countries and I could unequivocally feel that the average Indian is more aware of political current affairs. Even if final choices could be biased on the Hinduist/nationalist leanings (which is unfortunately a relatively new dynamics), they are not blind to what is happening. Many would call Modi a crook but do not want the alternative posed by Congress and still vote for him. Religious minority appeasing and Reservation biases have been abused so badly in last 3 decades by the opposition (which was in power) that people are now blind to the agenda people like Mr. Modi exort. Their responses are mostly reactionary to lost opportunities of work/social mobility. BJP in India has been projecting itself as savior of masses by bringing in measures, which would have been undemocratic 2 decades ago (e.g Article 370 abrogation or CAA recently). This is in stark contrast to people in US growing up leaning Blue or Red all through their lives, because their family or county has always voted that. If you ask why they chose to, the answer is almost always political party loyalty (and not the agenda). Coming November we will see this again when despite of so many legal predicaments, Donald Trump might still competing hard for presidency based on traditional loyalties. TikTok is aimed at the fence-sitters in US with dramatic immigration, crime or socioeconomic shock videos. When you have a crowd that is not in know-how of current political affairs, TikTok is enough to create disruption. If you had to do that in India, probably Facebook is the weapon of choice.
Secondly, of course the things that matter to the citizens in different countries would be different and of course the medium of propaganda in the countries are different (as an aside IMO, WhatsApp is the more influential medium in India). The topics like gun violence, abortion rights, race discrimination, health care, taxes ...etc are definitely things that get discussed about dinner tables and hold political sway in the US. The US style of 2 party system of presidential democracy and the role of electroral college are a bit problematic but the average US citizen isn't less political aware than the average Indian.
My point being, your assertion that Indians are somehow less immune to propoganda, is potentially arising out of some unconscious bias (one or more of confirmation or conformity or affinity..etc biases)
I don't think I will agree with you there again. But then we all have viewpoints and you can agree to disagree. I could similarly opine that you believe in a simpler, universal model of how political demagoguery works. Different populations respond to different degrees.
Looking at the voting bloc supporting DJT which is strongly pro-GOP/MAGA despite the dozens of legal challenges, the attempt to insurrection and felonies - that is unprecedented in any other place. My previous neighbors in NC still believe every one of the legal case is schadenfreude, and cannot understand why J6 actions were illegal and why "elections were not stolen". This is not a single person anecdote. A lot of educated people - working as nurse, technicians, delivery people just don't understand. I don't think this is just about loyalties. There is more at play. They are oblivious to many technicalities of governance and take the campaign email's/sms bulletpoints at face value. These are the target audience for TikTok based political influencing.
If the poor in India scrounging for two meals don't understand political big picture, I can excuse that. How can the recent right-wing tribalism among educated, well to do people in US explainable? I know social awareness cannot be quantified, but this perception is not just mine. The way conservative faction is getting away with its shenanigans despite so many challenges makes people everywhere else wonder why US voter factions for e.g. in Midwest and South are so so gullible & what could be done for awareness
I mean for all its faults the US did not give Donald Trump a second term and that's all that I have to say about this matter.
That said I am amused too, at how you are completely normalizing Trump and Modi -- two autocrats of varying ambitions. But last I checked, only one is a convicted felon from sexual assualt to the theft of strategic security material. US did not give Trump a second term, but he is having enough second chances at anything -- including the presidency -- after these legal hurdles. That says heftily of the public support. Same situation is probably unheard in any country today -- including India. Remember Rajiv Gandhi? He'd have been jailed had he not been assassinated. That is not an opinion but facts. India is poorer but political checks and balances have traditionally worked better. The fourth estate has made people accountable even if they are under fire over time. We have our versions of Fox News but there is difference. Else IndiaTV wouldn't be a butt of jokes even among far right. Speaking of this as someone who has voted against BJP consistently after the Vajpayee era
You have a grudge against my opinion -- feel free to. I started this discussion by saying we have different viewpoints of how social media is influencing people. I lived in both places in the last decade. I see it first place. I am by no means pointing fingers at you. You can be at peace with your world model. "The political shitshow in US is incomparable to anywhere else & a lot of it is voter ignorances" is probably the best tldr I could offer. You can choose to disagree, like I do for your viewpoint.
Minorities wielding power, like teens exploring sexuality, excel at not learning such lessons.
The correct answer to a perceived threat such as TikTok is to provide a superior TikTok.
If You think Prohibition (of alcohol) is somehow related to prohibition of TikTok, then corollary would be "correct answer to alcohol threat is better alcohol".
I read a nice(r) interpretation of the paradox a while ago - loosely the claim was made that it's not an ethical standard that you (your nation state, etc) have to apply to yourself in order to maintain a moral high-ground, but works better once you think of it as a social contract.
That is, if someone / another nation state is not willing to follow the same basic rule, then they don't get the benefit of it.
> That is, if someone / another nation state is not willing to follow the same basic rule, then they don't get the benefit of it.
I agree, but is a 3rd party interpretation even necessary in this context? The original text is minimal, as in literally a one-paragraph plain language footnote copied here in its entirety :
> "Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. " -- The Open Society & Its Enemies
Though once you conceptualise it as a social contract, there's no longer any paradox.
It's only if your mantra is 'maximum tolerance, regardless' that you have yourself a paradox.
(Note - I'm not suggesting Professor Popper was oblivious to this.)
He clearly wasn't, so forcing one particular interpretation based on the way you've personally set up the "paradox" goalpost is strange to me.
China blocks the internet because 50 years ago the vast majority of the country was illiterate and subsistence farming. You don't wake up one day equipped to critically think about statements that sound good but aren't true. You don't wake up understanding the tragedy of the commons. You don't suddenly have a historical understanding of how your country came to be and the values it was founded upon. You don't wake up having thought about the golden rule or "equality" and matched that to various situations in the zeitgeist. You don't wake up having fully contemplated that others might treat you the same way you treat them. These things come from major investments in public education.
Americans have huge amounts of privilege they aren't even aware they have. We grew up with public education, and don't understand what it means to not have public education, or have a poor literacy rate.
It might surprise many to know that while china does have great power over the GFW they choose not to enforce it for many of their educated and more well off citizens, which is why you can use VPN services to get pretty unfiltered internet within China.
The US is facing a crisis where half the population doesn't understand that in November they are going to vote to lose the right to have a meaningful vote, and so many people here haven't fully contemplated not taking that very very real possibility seriously. "Hoping" that Americans will arrive at the right conclusion is a poor strategy to continue living in a "liberal democracy." Living in a liberal democracy requires more than hope.
We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it."
Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them.
Your last question is perfectly reasonable, and I'm interested in hearing more specifics to this point as well.
However, your primary stated basis for skepticism seems flawed. One child's usage pattern under parental surveillance is almost certainly not reflective of the platform as a whole.
> What are they "doing to us" specifically?
You could have asked the same question about Wikileaks. Wikileaks was (credibly) publishing information in the interest of the public, yet Wikileaks played a direct and major part in compromising the presidency in 2016.
I think the main arguments against TikTok are:
1. They have ability to push specific agendas with plausible deniability
2. TikTok can suck in huge amounts of data and feed it to the Chinese intelligence apparatus
3. TikTok is "digital opium" under foreign supply and administration
4. China has banned our apps that both inspired and compete with TikTok in their own country
5. China has regulated TikTok in their own country because they believe it to be damaging to kids/society
The question being danced around is "should America head down the path of a great firewall or the greater path of internet balkanization?" Many here claim a firewall (banning a foreign app) is inherently authoritarian. I think a firewall is an amoral tool that can be used for good or evil. A gun can be used to defend freedom or take it. Guns are not authoritarian. A firewall is a similarly a tool of force.
> Something more specific than just "because China".
But that is the core problem. The problem is not so much TikTok, which in terms of actuality is likely not different than our own medias. The problem is China. I would be orders of magnitude more skeptical of anti TikTok efforts if TikTok were owned and operated by/in the EU.
If you start to bring up Cambridge Analytica, I think that would be pretty devastating to my stance. Maga-twitter is pretty devastating to my position too. Too few men having too much unchecked power is it's own problem which is arguably much more damaging than than anything China is doing, certainly in the long run.
I agree.
> We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it." Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them.
X, Meta, Instagram, and YouTube have far more power over our children in this regard, and also tend to disseminate more radical content than TikTok. If we're now banning social media for the sake of public health, then we should ban those first.
Sure, some people will act dumb when they are addicted. For so many others, you can't tell and you've never been able to - and these folks are peppered throughout society. Most aren't addicted.
Which basically means that I can dismiss the comparison, unless you meant that for most folks, it's not an issue.