Tiktok Ban Helps Silicon Valley and National Security Hawks—Not Users

Now that the legislation has passed, the next chapter of this story will play out in the courts. The government has a better case against TikTok if it argues TikTok should be banned due to the Chinese government’s ability to manipulate the opinions of American users (a speculation that has not been confirmed, let alone measured against all the other mis- and disinformation in the American information diet).

If American users are indeed as susceptible to manipulation as the ban suggests, it is more likely to be by videos coming from any source other than the Chinese state, which is known to create clunky and heavy-handed content that wouldn’t pass the smell test of the average high school student. Posts from Chinese agencies don’t go viral in China; they are less likely to go viral stateside.

Read the whole article via Forbes.