(2023-04-04) ZviM Given The Restrict Act, Don't Ban Tiktok

Zvi Mowshowitz: Given the Restrict Act, Don't Ban TikTok. The Restrict Act is a no good very bad bill, and having seen the bill I realize that I was wrong to support banning TikTok.

For a while I have been in favor of banning TikTok, if it does not divest its Chinese ownership and modify the software to stop collecting outside user data. TikTok is Chinese spyware. Letting it be installed on most phones, given the data it is collecting, is not something we can or should abide.

Then someone actually proposed a bill, S 686 or the Restrict Act. I was reminded why it is almost never a good idea to ban things. Rather than a narrow bill to allow the banning of TikTok, we got a bill that vastly expands government powers, a Patriot Act for the Internet.

Tiktok has admitted tracking journalists’ physical movements and sending the data to its Chinese parent company. But physical location is probably only the tip of the iceberg of the data TikTok can collect, which includes faceprints, voiceprints, browsing history, text messages, and pretty much anything you do on your phone.

What I do not understand is why Apple and Google haven’t taken care of this for us. If I was running an app store and I found out a popular app was collecting a lot of the data on everyone’s phone and sending it back, I’d have said “either you fix this in 72 hours or you don’t have an app in our store and we’re issuing a warning to everyone to delete it.” Somehow, that did not happen. It still is not happening. I don’t know why.

It did not help that the Congressional hearing went, by all reports, maximally badly for TikTok. Or that TikTok is said to have responded by filling some users ‘For You’ pages with Pro-Chew content

There’s just one little problem. Lawmakers are not our friends.

very exhaustive list of potential things one might deem a risk.

As Reason points out, even ‘social media’ is not mentioned

If your teenage kid gets sad after the Tik Tok ban, and installs a VPN to use their Tik Tok feed anyway, they can be charged with a felony, fined a million dollars, and put in jail for 20 years.