TikTok’s DC Lobbying Charm Offensive Unsurprisingly Isn’t Going So Hot
from the dysfunction-junction dept
To fend off a ban in the U.S., TikTok lobbyists have attempted to put on a doomed charm offensive in DC, spending a record $5.4 million on U.S. lawmaker influence last year. The effort has even involved opening “transparency centers” in DC designed to “educate” lawmakers on content moderation and the steps TikTok is apparently taking to assuage privacy and security concerns.
It’s quite unsurprisingly not working:
This week, Chew met with at least two lawmakers in Washington, Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who have voiced concern about Americans’ exposure to the popular video-sharing platform. Neither walked away swayed.
The influence campaign has had a particularly hard time penetrating the GOP. Not because the GOP cares so much about privacy and security (as we’ve well documented, the party actively created the oversight-optional regulatory landscape TikTok — and everyone else — exploits) but because it’s pretty clear the GOP goal has always been to force a sale of TikTok and its fat ad revenues to a U.S. Republican ally.
As we’ve noted a few times, a ban doesn’t actually fix the problem. Because the problem isn’t just TikTok. The problem is our comical, corrupt failure to implement privacy legislation or competent regulatory oversight of numerous data-hoovering companies (including the dodgy data brokers that cavalierly sell access to everything from your daily location data to your mental health issues).
That’s not to say TikTok is some innocent daisy undeserving of scrutiny. The company, like so many modern Internet companies, has routinely abused consumer privacy, even going so far as to spy on journalists and violate kids’ privacy laws. It’s a fairly typical, greedy, giant corporation which views U.S. consumer privacy as a distant afterthought.
That said, TikTok’s charm offensive can never sway the GOP, because the GOP isn’t actually interested in fixing the problems it’s pretending to be upset about (unchecked online political propaganda, consumer privacy).
The GOP supports everything they accuse TikTok of doing (online political propaganda campaigns, reckless collection and monetization of consumer data) but only if they, or a U.S. company, are the ones doing it. That fusion of patriotism, hypocrisy and corruption makes it hard to craft any serious, meaningful policy to address the potential harms the party is hyperventilating over.
The result is a big, dumb performance designed to appear as if the primary interest is privacy, national security, and Chinese influence. But like most GOP agendas, the real goal is the accumulation of wealth and money. Namely the transfer of TikTok to a Republican-allied U.S. company like Walmart or Oracle, who’ll then allow the GOP to exploit the app in all the ways the party currently accuses China of.
Democrats haven’t been much better. Countless Democrats hyperventilating about TikTok have also opposed meaningful privacy legislation and meaningful FTC regulatory oversight of data brokers. And the Biden advisors’ big “fix” for TikTok is to tether the company tightly to Oracle, a Republican-allied tech giant with its own long history of privacy violations and dodgy political choices.
U.S. politicians can’t fix the TikTok problem because they can’t (or won’t) even identify the actual problem (their support for largely nonexistent oversight of numerous, interconnected data monetization markets). That leaves TikTok lobbyists flailing about in a xenophobic soup trying to strike deals with folks whose only real goal is something TikTok won’t support (a full transfer of all assets to U.S. ownership):
“I don’t think there’s anything they can say. It’s all about what they do, and what they do is pretty alarming,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who sits on the Commerce Committee and has been a key negotiator in discussions around data privacy legislation on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of TikTok’s most outspoken and long-standing critics, said the company’s engagement shows it’s “scared” of looming regulation. Hawley last year spearheaded a successful campaign to prohibit federal employees from downloading the app on government devices, and has proposed legislation to ban it for consumers nationwide.
It’s unclear if this mess ever results in anything productive. I could see it resulting in a nationwide ban should relations between the U.S. and China deteriorate further. But as noted countless times, a ban of TikTok won’t stop a universe of other barely-regulated apps, data brokers, and telecoms from abusing consumer privacy. And it certainly won’t stop Chinese intelligence from obtaining all of this data.
TikTok is a problem we created via lax privacy policies we have no serious interest in fixing. It’s a result of our own greed, and conscious choice to prioritize making money over national security, market health or consumer welfare. Mix in general bigotry and oodles of corruption, and you’ve got a ridiculous policy soup that’s more romper room than serious adult policymaking.
Filed Under: ban, china, chinese government, content moderation, lobbying, privacy, social media, spying, surveillance
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “TikTok’s DC Lobbying Charm Offensive Unsurprisingly Isn’t Going So Hot”
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Unstoppable force (US lobbying) meets immovable object (dumb talking points that Republicans use to get their voting bases riled up.)
Well if insurrectionist supporter Hawley says they're bad they must be!
It’s almost enough to get me to pity them. When politicians have decided to use you as a punching bag and PR tool to rile up their bases no amount of explaining and persuasion is going to budge them since that would mean admitting that they were wrong and force them to find a new punching bag.
TikTok could become the gold-standard for user privacy overnight and not a single complaint levied against them by those decrying them would change because privacy isn’t the actual issue, who does and does not own them is.
Re:
China hawks in the Democratic Party who have used TikTok as a punching bag aren’t any better. They ought to take note that it’s a sizable part of TikTok’s core demographic (Gen Z and Millennials) that helped Dems gain and keep control of the Senate over the past two elections, and helped them stave off significant losses in the House in this past midterm.
Politically, being on the anti-TikTok side as a Democrat, considering TikTok users lean young and left, is an easy way to risk having young voters replacing you with a primary challenger or letting a Republican take your seat in the 2024 election.
The thing is lawmakers should know that they legally can’t ban a social media platform (even one owned by a foreign company), on account that:
* 1) it would violate the First Amendment, as it would suppress protected speech and communications by 94 million U.S. users;
* 2) it would probably spark a political backlash by Gen Z and Millennials akin to what cuts to Social Security or Medicare would do (the government dictating what apps people can use would not go over well with much of the public, not to mention that it’s bound to alienate younger voters that both parties need or even spur calls of primary challenges to any lawmaker who supports a ban; also, it creates a slippery slope considering the GOP’s own lack of respect or understanding of how the First Amendment works these days);
* 3) it would not bode well for other multinational Internet-based companies as it would incentivize backsliding democracies and authoritarian regimes to block any online platform they choose, and any criticism of censorship by U.S. lawmakers automatically be deemed hypocritical to many of their constituents and to other countries — not to mention it would risk retaliation by China against U.S. tech firms like Apple and Microsoft that manufacture products or sell tech to companies within the country (potentially making already expensive smartphones,tablets and computers more expensive for consumers), and;
* 4) unless the government has evidence proving the claims politicians are making about TikTok (which they likely don’t, in fact a recently published threat analysis report by Georgia Tech’s Internet Governance Project debunked most of them, especially the claims its recommendation algorithm could be manipulated to push CCP propaganda or that TikTok censors videos dealing with subject matter taboo to the CCP), it would likely be legally unwinnable on grounds that other options are available to address data privacy concerns (such as legislation to regulate how companies can utilize user data) that don’t infringe on users’ First Amendment rights (even the Supreme Court ruled in Packingham v. North Carolina that no government can prohibit access to social media to anyone).
Trump’s attempted ban in 2020 (which prompted such backlash that his allies had to convince him to sell it to a U.S. buyer, resulting in ByteDance attempting to sell a minority stake in TikTok to Oracle and Walmart) was blocked because it likely violated First Amendment protections in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that cover foreign Internet companies, so it’s doubtful that Congress would have any authority to block access to the app on similar grounds.
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They Wont Take The Bait
I’m starting to believe that the techdirt thinktank globalists were hoping that the lobbying effort would work on Republicans. That way they could enjoy the best of both worlds: continued foreign control of tiktok to ensure the abuses will continue, while also being able to blame Republicans. Rarely will you hear someone upset that lobbying isn’t having its desired effect.
Re:
Who could have expected fascist pathological liar Koby to also be an antisemite.
You’d think tiktok’s vast collection of children dancing suggestively would be more persuasive to Gaetz and the other Pedophole Party members.
Sorry TikTok, no matter how much you pump into lobbying, the money you throw at legislators will never outweigh your value to them as a boogeyman. You’re foreign and your userbase embarassed some powerful and incredibly thin skinned people, and you haven’t been around long enough to have a bunch of bought and paid for representatives in safe districts the way media companies, megachurches and MLMs have.
Re:
TikTok’s userbase will embarrass them even more if politicians cross them by trying to kick it out of the U.S. Gen Z is pretty good at showing up people in positions of power who do the wrong things (the pranks on the Trump Tulsa rally and Texas’ hotline for reporting on people suspected to be receiving abortion care come to mind).
Regulation: AKA straight-up bill of attainder.
Banning TikTok will not work.
If it is blocked, people will use proxies and VPN to bypass it.
Bypassing filtering does not break any laws in the United States.
I know that when I used to run a VPN service alongside the online radio station I had, my VPN got a workout during March Madness when people from offices networks all over the place were logging on to my VPN to watch the games.
No laws were being broken when the games were watched through my VPN, as bypassing filtering does not break any laws. They were not committing any crimes watching the games (though they could have ceratainly been fired), nor was I committing any crime by providing the VPN service to do it.
While my VPN did not have logging, I could see where connections were coming from while users were on, but as soon as a user logged off, all traces of their connection were gone with no logs.
In short, if the Feds should order TikTok blocked, bypassing with using a VPN or proxy does not any laws in the country.
“If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.” – Consulting, Despair.com
Threatening TikTok is simply more profitable for everyone than letting TikTok be. It gives politicians something to rile their supporters over, keeps lobbyists on all sides employed, and the flow of delicious user data going while all of the above is happening.
incompetence
tiktok could have saved $5.4M just by showing the assclowns this page!
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