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Person using Tiktok
Although many Barristers use Tiktok, they might not be familiar with the harms it could cause. In particular with foreign governments able to acquire Americans personal information and influence people without them knowing. In addition, Tiktok has devastating effects on the brains of all people but in particular of teenagers growing into adults. In January Congress passed a bill to force the social media company Tiktok to either get banned in the United States or sell off. Then President Joe Biden signed the bill. It seemed Tik Tok would get banned. The dangers of Tiktok were well accounted for. In a lawsuit filed in Kentucky it was revealed TikTok knew that it was having a serious effect on Teens mental health and was purposely addictive yet made no change. Kentucky Public Radio discovered this after copying and pasting redacted documents which revealed them. The company purposely targeted children and amplified those deemed attractive while putting down those deemed unattractive. It had an ultra powered algorithm which promoted content it thought would be profitable but had negative effects on the users. Many predicted it would be banned. It has already proved a national security threat. But then Trump took power and decided he wanted to “make a deal” with tiktok and postponed it for 90 days.
The company that owns Tiktok, Byte Dance is based in China. TIktok often collected data on the Americas specifically related to political issues like gun control, abortion and religion. Even though it says it is storing its data in the US away from Chinese officials, Tiktok employees often send the data to the main company. All Chinese companies are subject to searches with the data they collect. This means any of the users personal information can be looked at additionally and more disturbingly, users can be targeted with specific content due to the algorithm or political speech can be banned or downgraded due to the algorithm. We already saw this on X where right wing users who were critical of Elon Musk were downgraded on the algorithm and lost viewers. Chinese censorship can be used against Americans. This is especially concerning if a problem arose like China invading Taiwan and spreading chaos through Tik Tok, a similar strategy to how the Russians use social media to influence opinion. But since the Chinese have control over the app they will be able to do much more harm. The ability of tiktok to influence Americans can lead them to get false information without knowing whether it is true. This is an issue much larger though. Other social media platforms can use their algorithm to influence opinion without anyone knowing it but it is especially dangerous in the hands of an adversary. In addition its terrifying influence was showcased when many users sent letters to congress members at the encouragement of Tiktok showing its ability to influence the minds of Americans.
The algorithm that Tiktok uses is also problematic. It is supercharged and much more extreme then any of the other social media companies. This hurts teens. It has spread some bizarre conspiracy theories. That misleads users and spreads disinformation. It also promotes loneliness and mental issues. The role of Tiktok in contributing to the loneliness epidemic is well documented. Teenagers are in particular affected by this. One of the worst problems with the algorithm and teens is the scrolling and short 30 seconds or less videos. Since they are having to pay less attention in their everyday life, studies are showing students are having weaker attention spans. This means teens will have a harder time in life and learning new things. This is a wider problem on all platforms but TikTok is the most addictive and its algorithm is the worst which results in it being the biggest social media platform.
One might say that Tiktok is just another social media platform and effects are similar to others and has freedom of speech. They think that TikTok is no different than other social media companies and has the same negative effects and users will just go to a social media company. But in reality no free speech rights will be violated due to the banning of Tiktok. The case went before the Supreme Court and in a unanimous decision they decided to ban Tiktok.
The easiest way to fix many of the problems is just to ban Tiktok together to prevent it from having harmful effects on Americans and giving foreign adversaries our information. But we should also regulate other social media companies more to make sure their algorithms don’t promote fake news or hate speech or discriminate or promote certain groups of people.