The problem with banning TikTok

TikToks in trouble. But so is the internet as we know it.

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On August 6, President Trump issued an executive order prohibiting transactions with the video-sharing app TikTok. His order said that because TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, the app could pose national security and privacy risks to users in the US.

But the Trump administrations targeting of TikTok marks a departure from Americas traditional position on internet governance and online free speech. And it also comes at a time when the concept of a global internet itself is under threat.

Today a growing number of countries are pursuing various forms of internet sovereignty from Russia building a walled-off intranet, to India regularly shutting down its internet in areas of social unrest, to some European nations introducing a right to be forgotten from search engines.

All these trends point in the direction of a splinternet, where your experience of the internet increasingly depends on where you live, and the whims of the ruling parties there. As we explain in this video, thats a tough environment for an app like TikTok, which became globally successful almost immediately, and which connects people from around the world in hyper-personalized but often international subcultures.

With the excesses of the open internet visible daily (see: foreign election interference, data breaches, misinformation and hate speech, and domestic and corporate surveillance), the countries that do support a free internet will have to work hard to secure its future. But they may have to do it without the United States.

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Sources:
https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3664027
https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/reports/digital-deciders/
https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-understanding
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
https://www.lawfareblog.com/unpacking-tiktok-mobile-apps-and-national-security-risks
https://www.ft.com/content/6a1b9b4d-ddbc-4b62-9101-221510fb7b45
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190514-the-global-internet-is-disintegrating-what-comes-next
https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2020/02/KeepItOn-2019-report-1.pdf

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