Sheldon Richman on the proposed bill to force a sale of TikTok

According to Glenn Greenwald, the bill had been floating around for a few years but had not garnered enough support to get through Congress.  That changed recently, according to Greenwald, citing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Bari Weiss's Free Press.  Why?  As Greenwald documents, anxiety about TikTok took a quantum leap beginning on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israeli civilians and Israel began retaliating against the people of the Gaza Strip. 

What has this got to do with TikTok? you ask.  Good question.  Israel's defenders in the United States, such as Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, are upset that TikTok's young users are being exposed to what he calls anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic disinformation.  "It's Al Jazeera on steroids," Greenblatt said on MSNBC.  During a leaked phone call, he complained, "We have a TikTok problem," by which he means a generational problem.  Younger people -- including younger Jewish people -- are appalled at what Israel's military is doing in Gaza.  (To complicate things, it looks like TikTok and Instagram have suppressed pro-Palestinian information.) 

Would an American-owned TikTok be easier to control?  Experience says yes.  Have a look at the Twitter Files, which document how American officials, Chinese-style, pressured social media to censor or suppress dissenting views on important matters such as the COVID-19 response and the 2020 election.  A federal judge likened the government's efforts to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Do we want to become more like China?

~ Sheldon Richman, "TGIF: Leave TikTok Alone," Free Association, March 22, 2024