As we've been noting, Trump's executive order attempting to ban TikTok is not only legally unsound, it's not coherent policy. Chinese state hackers, with their unlimited budgets, can simply obtain this (and far greater) data from any of the thousands of companies in the existing, unaccountable international adtech sector, our poorly secured communications networks, or the millions of Chinese-made IOT devices or "smart" products Americans attach to home and business networks with reckless abandon. The U.S. has no privacy law and is a mess on the privacy and security fronts. We're an easy mark and TikTok is the very least of our problems.
With that as backdrop, it's clear that most of the biggest TikTok pearl clutchers in the Trump administration couldn't care less about actual U.S. consumer security and privacy. After all, this is the same administration that refuses to shore up election security, strictly opposes even the most basic of privacy laws for the internet era, and has been working tirelessly to erode essential security protections like encryption. If the U.S. was actually interested in shoring up U.S. security and privacy, we'd craft coherent, over-arching policies to address all of our security and privacy problems, not just those that originate in China.
Trump's real motivations for the ban lie elsewhere. As a delusional narcissist, some of his motivation is the attempt to portray himself as a savvy businessman, extracting leverage for a trade war with China he clearly doesn't understand isn't working, and is actually harming Americans. Spreading additional xenophobia as a party platform is also an obvious goal. But it's also becoming increasingly clear that at least some of the recent TikTok animosity is originating with Trump's newfound BFFs over at Facebook, who've been hammering Trump with claims that Chinese platforms "don’t share Facebook’s commitment to freedom of expression," and "represent a risk to American values and technological supremacy.":
"That was a message Zuckerberg hammered behind the scenes in meetings with officials and lawmakers during the October trip and a separate visit to Washington weeks earlier, according to people familiar with the matter. In a private dinner at the White House in late October, Zuckerberg made the case to President Donald Trump that the rise of Chinese internet companies threatens American business, and should be a bigger concern than reining in Facebook, some of the people said."
Nobody's getting specific on the details, but those Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, and Trump administration dinners last fall, not too surprisingly, focused a lot on the threat China poses to American industry:
"In a private dinner at the White House in late October, Mr. Zuckerberg made the case to President Trump that the rise of Chinese internet companies threatens American business, and should be a bigger concern than reining in Facebook, some of the people said."
On one hand, Facebook certainly has a case to make that if AG Bill Barr and state AGs impose poorly-constructed remedies that harm and/or hamstring Facebook, worse, less ethical foreign alternatives could come to dominate the vacuum that's created. On the other hand, this is Facebook and the Trump administration, and neither have been stellar examples of the "American values" the meetings sought to defend, so it requires some heavy logical lifting to presume Facebook's motivations here are predominately patriotic and altruistic.
Of course Facebook wants to build a narrative where U.S. companies are somehow exceptions to the privacy-violating unethical hubris that is the global norm. Of course Facebook wants to derail antitrust scrutiny of its own myriad failures and misdirect that scrutiny toward foreign competitors whose teen video data it covets. And of course Facebook wants you to believe it neither works closely with China nor exhibits many of the same bad privacy habits China routinely engages in. Aka an "opportunistic weasel," as Gizmodo puts it:
"...if these meetings happened the way the Journal is laying them out, then even if Zuckerberg isn’t guilty of calling TikTok a threat to our security, he’s very guilty of being a weasel. A weasel who isn’t afraid to cuddle up to an administration he’s ostensibly critical of, and offer up any other company, foreign or domestic, as a distraction to take the heat off antitrust scrutiny."
Facebook's self-serving posturing here may be accompanied by some legitimate concerns that hamstringing domestic social media giants in idiotic ways could only make things worse for U.S. tech in general, but it's also pretty hard to believe TikTok hysteria coincidentally reached a fevered pitch just as Facebook was unveiling its TikTok clone, Reels.
There are certainly whiffs of coordination here that go well beyond genuine concerns about the perils of regulatory over-reach. This being Facebook, how much coordination will likely emerge three months down the road, but Facebook, for its part, is claiming TikTok was never even mentioned at October meetings:
"Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in statement Sunday that "Mark has never advocated for a ban on TikTok." He also said it was wrong to conclude that policy decisions were driven by Zuckerberg.
"He has repeatedly said publicly that the biggest competitors to US tech companies are Chinese companies, with values that don't align with democratic ideals like free speech," he said. "It's ludicrous to suggest that long-standing national security concerns — raised by policymakers on both sides of the aisle — have been shaped by Mark's statements alone."
Zuckerberg could have easily avoided mentioning TikTok specifically at dinner, while having his policy folks and lobbyists repeatedly wind up Trump and Senate leaders on a TikTok ban. The problem with believing there's no unsavory coordination here requires leaning on reputations the Trump administration and Facebook simply don't have. Namely that either operates out of anything more than self-interest, or genuinely cares about the privacy and market ramifications of a teen dancing app. If either party is bothered by the insinuation they're not being truthful here, a good first step would be to perhaps stop lying constantly.
Whatever the motivation, it remains hard to view the TikTok ban as serious, adult policy given the track records of those involved with it, its legal shakiness, and the fact it won't actually accomplish any of its stated goals. It's a legally unworkable mountain of policy nonsense, and those who continue to pretend it's rooted in a genuine desire to protect Americans' data and security are giving the Trump administration -- and apparently Facebook -- credibility they've certainly never earned.