Mr. President-elect, don’t sell out on a TikTok ban: The app is a Chinese state influence op, and you were elected on a promise to get tough when social media companies collude with governments.
A quick recap: After a rare bipartisan victory in Congress, a ban on the app is set to take effect Jan. 19 unless parent company ByteDance sells out to a different owner not answerable to the Chinese Communist Party.
But now TikTok has asked the Supreme Court to intervene — and Donald Trump met with CEO Shou Zi Chew at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and is making noises suggesting he might throw the company a lifeline.
We know that Trump loves to make deals, and is likely enjoying the attention of a now-supine corporate America as it reckons with his commanding victory.
He’s also a huge fan of social media as a communications tool.
But TikTok is a tool of China’s massive surveillance state.
One of the company’s board seats is filled by a government appointee.
The vast troves of user data the social app collects, including private messages?
There for the CCP’s perusal; the company’s already admitted that its employees in China were using the data to track US journos.
(Imagine what it hasn’t fessed up to.)
ByteDance has major ties to China’s defense sector, including running an AI academy explicitly for military purposes.
Crucially, ByteDance owns the addictive algorithm that’s been key to Tik Tok’s success (and destruction) and won’t let it fall out of CCP-controlled hands.
That’s damning all by itself.
And that’s to say nothing about the app’s power to promote whatever content Beijing sees fit.
It’s a massive soft-power intelligence operation, in other words, running right out in the open — even as it damages and demoralizes American kids.
Some free-market evangelists may be uncomfortable with banning a business, but this is about restraining our most formidable foe.
The law banning it is beyond necessary.
Trump may claim a “warm spot” in his heart for the app, and he would’ve been impressed by the views he drove during the election.
But winning the fight against the Big Tech-Big Gov combine — as he has promised to do — means winning battles like this.
Anything less would be hypocrisy.
