Thinking about the fate of TikTok

I admit to having very mixed feelings about the whole TikTok issue.

Let's review. The US House of Representatives has passed, in what is nowadays an impressively bipartisan vote, (and with 352 yeas) a bill that would force Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok or face a US ban.

A study last year out of Rutgers University indicated a "strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government." Perhaps more worrying, the broad use of TikTok is a means by which interests in China may build up a database on Americans and America, and whoever at ByteDance can get that information would be susceptible to demands from his/her government to pass it along.

What information exactly (aside from dance trends) would China get in this way that it could turn to nefarious purposes? It could help identify targets for recruitment for espionage, or data could be crossed-checked with other sources to blow the cover of people now working for US intelligence agencies under cover. Not negligible concerns, but there is no specific evidence China has done this.

Perhaps most worrying is the possibility that China could use the prevalence of TikTok apps on American phones as an entrance for malicious software.

From such considerations you get a case for action. But ... there is the first amendment to consider. TikTok, whatever else it is, is a place where people and institutions express themselves. They express their opinions on a range of subjects. Its loss would be another public square closed down. And the closure would be NOT for content neutral reasons, but because it is thought to be a public square with a pro-China tilt. That is why I started with the Rutgers study about that alleged tilt. It is not the only reason, but it is very much in the mix and it is not at all content neutral.

Then there is the possibility that the real reason for cracking down on TikTok has little to do with the public case I just outlined.

https://gizmodo.com/politicians-who-voted-to-ban-tiktok-may-own-as-much-as-1851356203

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog