TikTok goes the Anti-Globalisation Bomb
With much that is whirling about these days, it isn't odd to see a heightened interest in politics. Often people find it easier to go about the day without much of a focus on who sits in the oval office or down at downing street and what that narcissistic lot get up to. Yet at times, certain things bring the public out to riot. We saw it in the black lives matter protests, a commendable pursuit. We saw it with coronavirus when public health and safety being on the line, it wasn't just a matter of otherworldly bickering.
More surprisingly however, we've now seen an outrage over something much fickler. Something much less impending, yet with much greater resonance than the issue it mainly addressed. Now this isn't to say that BLM and 'Madam Rona', as many call it, aren't huge causes. But rather that their relevance and weight lie in the issues themselves, calling out racially motivated shootings and prioritising public health. When it comes to this latest source of upheaval, there's much more to it than what lies on the surface.
It's the threatened ban of TikTok in the US.
No one had realised just how integral this app had gotten to their daily lives, how many elevator rides and bus journeys has passed away in scrolling through the 15 to 60 second videos. It was a platform that was highly effective, catering to the goldfish like teens (and certain adults) that found themselves alienated by the middle aged aunts on facebook and limited by snapchat and instagram. Not to imply that those social media platforms are any less circulated, but it's no wonder that TikTok was the most downloaded app on the app store in 2019.
So it's 165 million American users turned their heads up as they heard the news, #TikTokBan trended on twitter and many of the apps top American stars started to dash out links to their other socials.
The reason for this proposal was a 'threat to national security'. It's helpful to know that TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing based internet technology company founded in 2012. So it was the good old red scare that fuelled this scheme. The Trump administration expressed discontent at it's Chinese roots, with seemingly good president to do so. The communist party has been known to loom over it's companies, a demand by the government for people's data isn't unimaginable.
Of course, TikTok has denied that any such request has been made and said it would turn them down if they'd every do so. They've claimed that their western data is stored in Virginia and Singapore exclusively and denied any allegations that they censor content based on Chinese governmental guidelines, on sensitive topics such as the Hong Kong protests.
While Trump hasn't explicitly banned the app yet, he has targeted TikTok (and WeChat, another popular Chinese company) by stopping US companies from doing transactions with the company, giving a 45 day period for implementation. He then put the companies under review as a threat to national security.
Surprisingly, the US isn't the first to lash out at TikTok. And perhaps even more so, it wasn't Europe that lead the way this time either. It was first temporarily banned in Indonesia and Bangladesh in 2018, yet it's clear to see those weren't largely influential. It wasn't until India made the first permanent ban on the popular app earlier this year, that things really started to stir up. There were various reasons purported for Delhi's actions, ranging from cyberbullying, deepfakes and 'cultural degeneration'. Yet the major justification that Trump picked up on recently was the Indian 'Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology' assertion that TikTok was stealing user's data in an unauthorised manner.
To what extent this is true has been largely debated, often dismissed. Many have, largely justifiably, claimed that while India's ban of the app was fuelled partly by elderly scorn of enjoyable tech, that pressure has been present since the start of 2019. It is only now, after the border clash with China that left India humiliated and shocked, that the Indian government decided to hit back with the ban on TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps. Thus, it isn't hard to conclude that the ban was largely politically motivated...
So where does that leave the American move? There are many conspiracy theories for why the American president decided to make a move now. Perhaps it's due to TikTok users constant mockery of him or rather their intent to, with #SaveBarron, rescue Trump's son from his family's crooked politics. Or possibly, and more believably, a convenient way of smoking over the 33 percent drop in the economy and rising coronavirus cases just before the November elections?
Yet many that have kept up with the news would notice that this isn't the first that Trump has used his executive powers to injure Chinese interest. The trade war has been ongoing, only put on pause during the current pandemic havoc. So, in many ways this can be seen as a reiteration against China's many previous punches or a gong ringing to end the recess. This theory appears to have deeper implications as the TikTok and WeChat bans were followed up by further restrictions on Chinese companies listed in the US. Something that Alibaba, a Chinese multinational technology company, seemed to have foreseen when it listed on Hong Kong, as well as its preexisting listing in the US, November last year as an 'escape valve'.
This leaves many companies and pro-trade economists in agitating turmoil. With a trigger happy Trump and ever more sceptical China, the doom-predictors of globalisation appear to have gained another chip. For all sakes, and with upcoming US elections, we can only hope that they're words are mere hyperbole.