There's so much more to the TikTok debate than one nation sweeping up swaths of information about another's citizens. Especially, when those citizens are using the app to manipulate the strings of commerce.
Millions of micro partnerships converting views into cash, bolstering demand for inanimate objects produced all over the world. A once hardened, global trade architecture, dissolving into a remapped web of intercontinental shipping traffic.
Herds of human capital pumping out products to appease viewers mesmerized by slick content, employing all the right mechanisms to extract dollars from pockets without ever having to exit the app. Algorithms primped to ensure maximum engagement is achieved...
"Gotta have/do that, saw it on TikTok!"
Cut out the middle man and keep more for yourself. "Sky's the limit", they say, or is it the moon? Mars? Digital platforms replacing big-box retail giants as invisible, virtual fulfillment centers: Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop. Good? Bad? Depends.
And, lest we forget, the genie rolling around in all that data, working it into a perfectly parsed visual summation, depicting trigger points plotted across overarching demographics and trends, complete with heat map overlays!
Feed that delicious, informatic stew to AI for a large language slurp and burp and you've got yourself some top tier, Grade A, James Beard level, crazy-ass, fusion shit right there!
Biddi-biddi-biddi-biddi-biddi-biddi-biddi, Buck!
Biddi-biddi-biddi. The Emperor strikes back!
Through a magnificent sleight of hand, an entire class of people is propped up by another, growing ever more dependent on a subsidized lifestyle that appears outwardly similar to that of a class that can afford to pay others to do everything for them.
Wooooo! (as in a Nature Boy Rick Flare, "Wooooo!")
That's more than complicated, that's winding complicated into the yarn of a masterfully knit sweater.
Now, "hold this thread as I walk away."
Which pin gets pulled when, and what happens to everyone after, if the act of doing so upsets the apple cart?
That's a whole lotta apples coming at ya, and nobody can eat that many apples.
But, yeah, keep saying it's a, "1st amendment thing."
Back to reality, security and social engineering on a colossal scale.
Can you imagine targeted campaigns alerting users with XYZ coordinates about this, that, or the other thing, directing them to go to, or flee, XYZ areas or take an XYZ course of action, immediately?
When an app that serves as a market control knob for the entire planet is also the main source of "news" for gobs of people, suffice it to say, things can get dicey real quick.
I mean, really, which high ranking official looked at all the intel on this and sat there saying, "hmmm, let's see where they're going with this."
They should've banned any and all assaults on privacy from day one, but that never happened. Too complicated, I guess.
Let's single out those most impressionable for a moment...
Push all the right buttons and activate a flurry of perfectly orchestrated lone wolf scenarios. A cast of marionettes, "swaying to the Symphony of Destruction!"
Multiply that by a factor of (who knows what) given the leader of a nation can command and control any and all directives for the app in question.
Can you say choreographed chaos?
But, that's true of US incorporated Meta, X, Snapchat, etc. (enter the claim that ALL social media apps collect and broker data on its users so what's the difference) Again, shoulda-coulda-woulda, but didna, and here we are.
Does that mean nothing should ever be done?How many of those apps are allowed in China? Zero! Not one. Except, if you count TikTok's cousin, Douyin, the one that's only nice-nice smooth.
How's that for, "free speech?"
Last I checked, Meta is a publicly traded company, their decisions to do this, that or the other, not under the hammer of a particular nation's leader. Yet, stands to increase shareholder wealth immensely if TikTok goes down.
X, now privatized, is arguably under the lever of a single stakeholder, but that individual is not the POTUS, are they?
However, that stakeholder does shoot rockets into space, commands a constellation of communication satellites, manufactures autonomous, electric vehicles and is testing out a chip implanted into human brains that bestows telepathic abilities upon its users.
If our future were ever uncertain, it's coming at us in slow motion now. Might want to keep an eye on that guy, huh?
The more systems one integrates, the more powerful that system becomes.
Is there any sort of legislation that aims to restrict the monopolization of technological breakthroughs, a ban on connected dots per se?
Is that even possible?
Look, the level of sophistication required to command and control what users see through a hack of platforms similar to TikTok undetected makes the prospect incomparable to one person saying,
"I own you. Do what I say, NOW!"
Americans can't even be asked to do the speed limit in the US, let alone anything their democratically elected leader might ask of them, storming the Capitol to upend their own democracy in favor of autocratic rule not withstanding.
Uh huh, keep on scratching.
When a nation's freedom is taken for granted, that very freedom becomes its Achilles' heel.
End of story.
