Scheer notes that the banning of TikTok would be “a betrayal of the whole notion of free trade, market economy” — a sign that America cannot stand the competition of an actually free market. Further, he points out that while there is no evidence that China is using TikTok to spy on Americans, a recent Reuters report reveals that the Trump administration used a “fake information program using Chinese social media to slam leaders of China…and create a great deal of ferment.”
Both Scheer and Greene agree that the U.S. “actually set the standard of observing people through technology.”
Greene says one of the harms America will suffer if the bill is passed is “the U.S.’s loss of moral authority” to chastise other governments for inhibiting the free flow of information around the world.
Greene states “If they were serious about protecting privacy as a freedom, they’d pass a data privacy law—but this is not that.” Further, he points out that if social media companies were limited in the data they could collect from users, then there’d be no threat of TikTok giving the data to China in the first place (because TikTok, and all other social media companies, wouldn’t even have the data to begin with).
The precedent this bill instead would set is the total control of the internet by the federal government — enabling American leaders to banish entire websites and limit the modes of internet communication to which users prefer to have access, like the 170 million users that use TikTok.
As Scheer notes, “The big takeaway here is we can't stand real competition in the marketplace and we're going to use politics to destroy it which is what every totalitarian government has done.”
So, the question remains: If the Chinese government is using TikTok as a spying device to undermine American national security, where is the evidence?
