By ensuring social media companies are controlled by right-wing American billionaires who are not beholden to any rules and really like Russian and other disinformation campaigns?
The first is handwringing over social media by ostensibly liberal people who, to be fair, have a point about it being a vector for foreign disinformation campaigns.
But a) a lot of Americans are stupid and spread disinformation themselves and b) these people don't seem to have any better solution than nuking entire sites / apps or worse, imposing liabilities on platforms for the content they carry, which will have obvious chilling effects on speech.
This is related to social conservative "concerns" about social media's effect on young people, particularly LGBT+ supportive information, which many of them would like to deem "pornographic" and nuke from the Internet using legislation like KOSA.
But social media is also scapegoated for a wide range of psychological issues undoubtedly caused by obvious stressors in kids' lives like rampant gun violence, financial problems, climate devastation, and a culture hostile to kids and teens.
I would point out "X" is basically a giant bot net for pushing fascist conspiracy theories, fake news, and whatever Russia, Saudi Arabia, or other foreign entities want to promote there.
Elon Musk doesn't give a fuck as long as it's making him money.
And there has been practically zero regulatory interest from either app stores or the US government, although a lot of liberals seem to think anything that would destroy "X" is a good thing no matter what blowback comes with it.
Likewise, if ByteDance is forced to divest from TikTok, the most likely American buyers are a consortium of right-wing billionaires led by Steve Mnuchin, who will almost undoubtedly use TikTok the same way Musk uses "X."
I'm not strongly convinced the Chinese government uses TikTok to promote disinformation to Americans anyway, but the likely outcome of a forced sale will be more fascist, Russian, and other foreign propaganda, including probably Chinese. So what's the point?
If the argument is American companies are uniquely trustworthy with your data, that's obviously false.
If the argument is the US government will be in a better position to regulate sites under American ownership, well, there is no evidence of that either.
Anti-China racism and Cold War style political paranoia obviously play a role, too, and that was Trump's primary motivation for wanting to ban or force sell TikTok to American owners, in addition to helping right-wingers seize control of more social media.
You might recall this originally came up during Trump's tariff war, which hurt the US economy and with no appreciable benefit to domestic manufacturing. The Chinese government isn't good but they are a major trade partner.
Democrats have increasingly leaned into anti-Chinese sentiment, supposedly about Taiwan and Chinese human rights violations, but it's mainly about white anxieties over foreign manufacturing competition, particularly in tech.
Much as Biden has recently leaned into Trump's racist anti-immigration crusade, which is ultimately about white supremacist "great replacement" conspiracy theories being pumped in the media by right-wing figures.
The other big thing here, which isn't receiving anywhere near the attention it deserves, is that TikTok is popular primarily with teenagers and younger people, whom Democrats and Republicans both seem to loathe.
This has become particularly obvious in light of Israel-Gaza, as TikTok was singled out for "supporting Hamas and terrorism" because of pro-Palestinian content, which TikTok wasn't promoting but which is actively suppressed on Facebook, Instagram, and "X."
Indeed, talk of a TikTok ban was substantially revived by accusations the platform was promoting pro-Palestinian content, which wasn't true.
But the fact it wasn't suppressing such content the way other companies did attracted the ire of the Israel Lobby, who recognized younger Americans have been turning against them in droves over the genocide in Gaza.
Taken with the crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses and elsewhere, Congressional urgency starts to make sense.
It's not exactly coincidental that the TikTok ban got bundled with legislation providing billions in weapons and support for both Israel and Ukraine, allowing even Democrats who are squeamish about the genocide to proclaim it as a win.
Biden didn't even talk about the TikTok aspect of the bill in his signing statement, and coincidentally, perhaps, the divestiture / ban requirement won't take effect until after the November election and just before the next presidential inauguration. 🤔
I don't think I need to explain why the GOP hates young people, as they're demographically more liberal, more diverse, and more queer than the average, all of which has provoked a white supremacist backlash in a multitude of venues trying to make the country whiter and more conservative: anti-immigration, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT+, anti-education, anti-union, anti-worker, and so on.
The Democratic Party's issues stem from the generational divide between the old, white, wealthy leadership and consultant / donor class and younger voters who care a lot more about abortion, genocide, LGBT+ rights, etc. than they do.
These young people are also more financially precarious as they haven't benefited from economic growth and intergenerational wealth, much of which is still held by Boomers, Silents, and the billionaires and corporations who don't pay taxes but own everything.
Young people aren't really beneficiaries of the Biden Economy, to put it mildly, and they're also keenly aware that it's their asses on the line in the culture war with Republicans, whom Democrats like Biden consider their very dear friends.
The response from Democrats and their boosters online has generally been contempt, though, and the expectation that they show up and vote for Biden no matter what, which is increasingly fraught because of Gaza.
It's not surprising then that when TikTok users drowned Congress in phone calls opposed to a ban, Democratic and Republican politicians alike were furious and told them to go fuck themselves and responded by pushing even harder for it on the theory that young people making their voices heard was exactly what they hated most about all of this.
The response to anti-cop and pro-Palestinian and ceasefire protesters has been much the same regardless of how upper crust they are, with Biden essentially calling the latter terrorists and conservative Democrats like Caitlin Flanagan fantasizing about sending in the cops to fuck them up.
A TikTok ban might not be monumental in the grand scheme of things, but it does come at a bad time for how politically aware young people view Biden and the Democratic Party, which says one thing and then largely does another.
I think you get a sense of how overcooked the TikTok hysteria is when Congresspeople call it "digital fentanyl."
The sense I keep getting is there is a demographic of white, older, wealthy, and conservative people who have completely lost the plot on what's actually happening in America, especially for anyone who isn't privileged like them, and who are primed to either blame young people directly or to blame technology and social media for why young people are both very miserable and very angry about the world they forced on them.
Because it's easier than taking responsibility and trying to fix things.
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