The interesting unintended consequences of banning TikTok.
If there’s one thing about the internet and its users, it’s that they’re resilient. If access is denied in one area, people will find an alternative. The result is a cascading series of unintended consequences that circumvent the intentions of the authorities. Here’s what I mean.
TikTok users in the US, facing a ban on their beloved app, users are moving to another Chinese company called Red Note that offers much the same sort of functionality. Will governments go after that company, too? Maybe.
But this theory won’t go away: The threat of a TikTok ban is designed to drive down the price so some Trump-friendly billionaire could buy it and control another corner of mass media. Would China sell TikTok to Elon Musk? Let’s hope not. What could possibly go wrong? Fortunately, a sale to Musk seems to be “pure fiction.”
A TikTok ban in the US is both tilting at windmills and hypocritical. Yes, TikTok and its Chinese parents sucks in tons of data from users, but so do popular Chinese apps like Shein and Temu. Is there clamouring to ban them? Nope. And let’s not forget that all other social media platforms, including everything owned by Meta, X, and all the rest of them do exactly the same thing. And don’t get me started on the data collection by Amazon.
Now that people are pissed with Mark Zuckerberg for sucking up to Donald Trump and dropping fact-checking moderation, people are moving from Meta’s Instagram to a Chinese company called Xiaohongshu.
And then we have this: A group of people are looking for donations to build a social media network that’s free from billionaires. The campaign is called Free the Feed.
The internet is borderless. Good luck in stopping people from migrating elsewhere.
