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You Can't Internet Harder to Solve this Problem: TikTok Ban Not About Open Internet [1]
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Date: 2023-03-29
This come ups when I search for TikTok and its adorable, so it wins.
This is an odd argument
The biggest reason TikTok can’t prove your data is secure is that we live with a web built around opaque walled gardens — one where we’re all putting huge amounts of trust in a few companies that probably don’t deserve it. There’s a world, by contrast, where services like TikTok are built around interoperability. You could choose where your data is stored, and the app could get access to what you intentionally disclosed, like your viewing history and the videos you’ve posted. While you engaged with tools like AI-generated filters or the recommendation algorithm, things like your location and keystroke data could stay on your phone or with a host of your choosing. And in a worst-case scenario where a TikTok ban did happen, you wouldn’t lose access to every video you’ve ever made or watched. If TikTok refused to allow that kind of interoperability, there’d be a more morally consistent argument for cracking down on it. It wouldn’t solve every potential critique of the service, but it’s far better than what we’ve got now. The TikTok ban is a betrayal of the open internet - The Verge
This comes toward the end of an article arguing that we should not ban TikTok that is, to be fair, more reasonable than this snippet suggests. But this snippet does highlight a lot of the problems we still have with the concept of the internet. For some reason, we still cannot seem to talk about internet companies like, well, companies and not magical entities that will usher in utopia.
The argument is that is it would be more morally acceptable to ban TikTok if it refused to participate in a world where you could freely move your data than because today it is a company that 1) at least partners with a government known to disappear activists and target dissents overseas, 2) has been caught systematically targeting journalists with its tools, and 3) is demonstrably effective at manipulating its users' emotions to the extent that it is a known contributor to teenagers', especially teenage girls', mental health issues. That is an insane proposition. It is so stupid that the only way you could write it is if your world view was completely warped.
Unfortunately, the internet has seemingly completely warped a lot of people's perspective. The promise of the early internet was nice -- a way around otherwise stifling gatekeepers, a means of connecting with likeminded people. And some of that promise did hold true. A lot of progress we have made over the last thirty years has been driven in part by a communication regime allowed by internet publications and systems. But modern internet products are largely closed gardens, primarlily keeping people engaged with what they want to hear and what keeps them emotionally on edge. A lack of gatekeepers has meant the destruction of local news, to our detriment, and the spread of misinformation. And yelling about the open internet or the First Amendment doesn't change these facts. Nor does it change the fact that the individual companies involved are just that -- companies making products. And you don't have a right to make defective or harmful products, and the open internet as a principle is an ideal, not a law.
As for the merits of the argument, it fails spectacularly. Interoperability doesn't solve any of the problems with TikTok. It is probably worth exploring why, just to highlight how the internet uber ales arguments are simply incapable of meeting the moment. The case for banning TikTok, or, more realistically, using the threat of a ban to force TikTok's parent company to sell it, rests on a few pillars, none of which are realistically impacted by interoperability.
First, as the article points out, the Chinese government is not adhering to the principle of the open internet. It bans many social media and American companies that do not allow it to censor or provide unsupervised access to their data. And I can tell you from experience, working in tech, that the Chinese government takes its laws about data storage, etc. very seriously. You can make an argument, as the article does, that we should rise above that, stick to our principles. I don't find that argument compelling -- it has not convinced China to participate as a fair partner in the global internet, so why should they be allowed to benefit? Being a sucker is not a principle, in my opinion. -- but interoperability would not solve that issue. In fact, unless you think that the lack of interoperability in social media apps means that no one is honoring the principles of the open internet, then the Chinese government is already demonstrably violating the principles the article is arguing it upholds. Why would the lack of interoperability be the straw that breaks the camel's back rather than outright censorship or the world's most effective surveillance state? It feels very much like special pleading, an excuse to ignore the reality of the situation.
Second, ByteDance notably did not claim independence from the Chinese government when given the opportunity to. This matters, because, as noted, the Chinese government regularly tracks and harasses Chinese dissidents and citizens overseas. TikTok itself has been caught, as a company, tracking journalists to attempt to out their sources. As the article notes, American based companies have done similar, but not as companies -- it has been individual employees. And also as the article notes, much of the data TikTok has available could be purchased from data brokers. But those transactions leave records and introduce a certain amount of friction in the process -- neither of which are true if the Chinese government can simply reach into TikTok's systems and get or request what they need. And there is a huge difference between a company tracking and harassing you and a government with all the power of its police, miliary and intelligence services doing so. The whataboutism in the article doesn't take that factor into account, nor does it explain how interoperability would help. Once your data is present in a system, moving it won't help in most of these cases. The info that allows you to be tracked back to your sources, for example, is still there.
Finally, TikTok is a manipulative social media platform that has a demonstrable effect on what people feel about themselves and about the world around them. Andrew Tate owes his fame, such as it is, and his influence to TikTok. TikTok actively harms your teen's health -- suggesting self-harm content within a few minutes of use, for example. Again, TikTok is hardly unique in any of this. But its close relationship and/or control by the Chinese government raises the stakes in a meaningful way. While there is no clear evidence that the Chinese government has tried to use TikTok to manipulate sentiment, the possibility is there, and TikTok does allegedly already decide for itself to manipulate what users see. This is the one place interoperability might help, but only if you have an enormous faith in the market.
By making it easy to move your data away from TikTok to another service, the theory goes, you can put pressure on social media companies to not manipulate you. But in reality, this is unlikely to work. Because of network effects, there are likely to only ever be a handful of social media companies even if moving between them is easy. And since the best way to drive engagement, and thus make money, is to keep people emotionally disturbed, well, you can bet on that being the default mode for these companies if we leave them to their own devices.
I lean toward a ban on TikTok, or at least the treat of a ban to make it's parent company divest. But I am not unsympathetic to the First Amendment issues involved. And I am deeply aware that the majority of the issues with TikTok are issues with social media companies and the internet in general. It would be nice if this resulted in real data privacy laws, or a ban on personalized ads, or, yes, forced interoperability -- all things I have been advocating for longer than I can remember. But what would be even nicer is if it led to people to stop treating the internet if it was a magical fucking unicorn grove where everything would be perfect if we just let the internet fairy sprinkle us with interoperability or saying whatever we want without repercussions or defending the delusion that internet companies are making internet-y internets and not products like every other damn company since the beginning of time.
If I sound a wee bit cranky, it's because I am. I get that the internet used to hold an enormous promise. And I get that it is sad to see that promise dissipate. But those are the facts. And we need to stop pretending that the internet is some special place that is going to, just by its mere existence, save us from the hard questions of self-governance. It's not. It's just a communications delivery method, like millions that have come before it. And the companies that sit atop it are just companies -- many run by people who appear to have the empathy for other human beings commonly found in things like rabid dogs and the bubonic plague. It has been thirty years or so -- it is time for the people who care about the potential of the internet and democratic societies to admit that the revolution didn't turn out the way they hoped, stop pretending that everything can be fixed with we just internet harder, and settle into the real work of making the internet work for society instead of the other way around.
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