TikTok is a popular social media app that originated in China, originally called Musicly, currently
owned by ByteDance. It is a major social media for short form videos and popular among lots of
teenagers. Over the past three years as of the time of writing this (early 2024), there have been some
attempts to ban the app for national security and "protecting the children". This website lists some
reasons it shouldn't be banned, and mainly focuses on the
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act
bill.
Why we shouldn't ban TikTok:
1. Free speech
Banning TikTok threatens free speech because millions of people use it to spread messages and communicate,
it also tries to restrict what apps / programs you can publish online, which should be none of the governments business.
2. Rights to your device
The government should have no business telling you what apps / programs you can install on your own personal devices.
The government shouldn't baby its citizens and tell them what they can or cannot install on their devices, TikTok is
not forced upon the user, it is your choice to download and use it.
3. Implementation / enforcement
The implementation of this ban could be detrimental to free speech and privacy if not implemented correctly, for example,
would they heavily increase surveillance online to try to stop people from distributing it? Would they increase the power of
the FCC and give them the power to easily censor whatever website they want for this purpose? Currently, the proposed bill
wouldn't legally allow them to do this, but if it is easy to get around, new bills could be proposed to implement some of
these things, and that also opens the door to lots of abuse of power.
4. Malicious intent
This bill to ban TikTok might not really be for "national security" or "protecting the children", but rather a way to
normalize this kind of government control, or give them more power and control over the internet with its implementation.
It could also be used for increasing users in other American social media services such as Facebook or Twitter,
simply so some big tech corporations can profit and collect more user data. There have been many bills trying to give
the government more control over the internet such as
SOPA
(stop online piracy act) and KOSA
(kids online safety act),
these bills are designed to heavily increase digital surveillance and censorship, it is not unusual for bills like this to be proposed.
5. Loss of careers
Many people enjoy using TikTok and some people make a living off of it, so it would be kinda unethical to ban it.
Contact
You can email me (the website owner) at protiktok-contact@protonmail.com.