The TikTok Flap: Wings on a Locomotive?
March 20, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I find the TikTok flap interesting. The app was purposeless until someone discovered that pre-teens and those with similar mental architecture would watch short videos on semi-forbidden subjects; for instance, see-through dresses, the thrill of synthetic opioids, updating the Roman vomitorium for a quick exit from parental reality, and the always-compelling self-harm presentations. But TikTok is not just a content juicer; it can provide some useful data in its log files. Cross correlating these data can provide some useful insights into human behavior. Slicing geographically makes it possible to do wonderful things. Apply some filters and a psychological profile can be output from a helpful intelware system. Whether these types of data surfing take place is not important to me. The infrastructure exists and can be used (with or without authorization) by anyone with access to the data.
Like bird wings on a steam engine, the ban on TikTok might not fly. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How is your security revamp coming along?
What’s interesting to me is that the US Congress took action to make some changes in the TikTok business model. My view is that social media services required pre-emptive regulation when they first poked their furry, smiling faces into young users’ immature brains. I gave several talks about the risks of social media online in the 1990s. I even suggested remediating actions at the open source intelligence conferences operated by Major Robert David Steele, a former CIA professional and conference entrepreneur. As I recall, no one paid any attention. I am not sure anyone knew what I was talking about. Intelligence, then, was not into the strange new thing of open source intelligence and weaponized content.
Flash forward to 2024, after the US government geared up to “ban” or “force ByteDance” to divest itself of TikTok, many interesting opinions flooded the poorly maintained and rapidly deteriorating information highway. I want to highlight two of these write ups, their main points, and offer a few observations. (I understand that no one cared 30 years ago, but perhaps a few people will pay attention as I write this on March 16, 2024.)
The first write up is “A TikTok Ban Is a Pointless Political Turd for Democrats.” The language sets the scene for the analysis. I think the main point is:
Banning TikTok, but refusing to pass a useful privacy law or regulate the data broker industry is entirely decorative. The data broker industry routinely collects all manner of sensitive U.S. consumer location, demographic, and behavior data from a massive array of apps, telecom networks, services, vehicles, smart doorbells and devices (many of them *gasp* built in China), then sells access to detailed data profiles to any nitwit with two nickels to rub together, including Chinese, Russian, and Iranian intelligence. Often without securing or encrypting the data. And routinely under the false pretense that this is all ok because the underlying data has been “anonymized” (a completely meaningless term). The harm of this regulation-optional surveillance free-for-all has been obvious for decades, but has been made even more obvious post-Roe. Congress has chosen, time and time again, to ignore all of this.
The second write up is “The TikTok Situation Is a Mess.” This write up eschews the colorful language of the TechDirt essay. Its main point, in my opinion, is:
TikTok clearly has a huge influence over a massive portion of the country, and the company isn’t doing much to actually assure lawmakers that situation isn’t something to worry about.
Thus, the article makes clear its concern about the outstanding individuals serving in a representative government in Washington, DC, the true home of ethical behavior in the United States:
Congress is a bunch of out-of-touch hypocrites.
What do I make of these essays? Let me share my observations:
- It is too late to “fix up” the TikTok problem or clean up the DC “mess.” The time to act was decades ago.
- Virtual private networks and more sophisticated “get around” technology will be tapped by fifth graders to the short form videos about forbidden subjects can be consumed. How long will it take a savvy fifth grader to “teach” her classmates about a point-and-click VPN? Two or three minutes. Will the hungry minds recall the information? Yep.
- The idea that “privacy” has not been regulated in the US is a fascinating point. Who exactly was pro-privacy in the wake of 9/11? Who exactly declined to use Google’s services as information about the firm’s data hoovering surfaced in the early 2000s? I will not provide the answer to this question because Google’s 90 percent plus share of the online search market presents the answer.
Net net: TikTok is one example of a software with a penchant for capturing data and retaining those data in a form which can be processed for nuggets of information. One can point to Alibaba.com, CapCut.com, Temu.com or my old Huawei mobile phone which loved to connect to servers in Singapore until our fiddling with the device killed it dead. 
Stephen E Arnold, March 20, 2024
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