Trump’s found a new enemy, and this time he’s decided to pick on TikTok. This isn’t the usual politics story, so I spent some time browsing TikTok this morning to see exactly what’s got the president so riled up.
What I’ve found so far are mostly short videos of people cleaning their bathroom mirrors. Also: lots of dog videos. It’s not exactly the kind of content that would normally spark a political controversy:
In fact, the front page doesn’t have much political content to speak of. There were about two videos that looked like ads for the US military, and there were a handful of religious-themed videos.
Mostly, though, it’s dogs:
It’s clearly also addictive, as I probably spent an hour there, wondering: Where’s the politics? What’s the outrage causing Trump to put this particular website and app in to his sites?
The China Connection
TikTok isn’t the first social media app that uses short videos for content. Vine was the first to hit the market, and while it was around it was plenty popular. But Vine was also acquired early by Twitter, who was still struggling to be profitable in their own regard. When the costs of moderating and serving such a massive collection of videos put even greater pressure on their balance sheet, the service was shuttered. An archive remained for several years, but fans of the short video format would have to wait to find a new platform. Twitter tried to incorporate as much of Vine’s appeal in to their own program, but it just wasn’t the same.
Enter TikTok: developed in China by a Chinese company named ByteDance, TikTok launched globally in 2017 and quickly claimed the space Vine had once dominated. By October of 2018, it had become the most downloaded app in the United States.
Now TikTok isn’t exactly the same as the version that was released in China. 抖音, or Douyin, is the Chinese local version. Although it uses a nearly identical interface, it’s run on completely separate servers and moderated to comply with Chinese censorship standards. That’s a perfect combination for Chinese investors, as it allows them to pursue revenue growth abroad while keeping local authorities happy.
But Trump still isn’t happy, apparently, as he’s spent a large part of this weekend talking about how he plans to ban the app.
Trump might be following India’s lead. On June 29, they banned TikTok as well as 59 other Chinese made internet apps. Officials cited nonspecific security concerns, but critics noted that the timing coincided with border skirmishes and other erosions of internet liberty in the country.
Maybe it’s the young people
While the generation gap in U.S. politics is finally shrinking, this is mostly because older voters are coming around to the perspectives of the younger generations. There’s also a demographic inevitability that results from such a skewed generational alignment in politics: older generations will continue to lose numbers to old age, and younger generations are filling out the voter roles faster than they’re turning conservative with age.
Specifically, TikTok was cited as an organizing platform for the teenagers that helped to make a mockery of Trump’s Tulsa rally. By organizing to register for thousands of tickets, Trump’s campaign team was convinced they were walking in to an event with an overflow crowd. When they got there, they found they couldn’t even fill the seats:
But spite for young people doesn’t necessarily explain the situation entirely. Young people are also plotting to embarrass and vote Trump out on just about every social media platform that exists.
Is TikTok just uniquely vulnerable?
As much as Trump would probably like to shut down Twitter and all the Youtubers who trash talk his administration, he may just not have as good of a legal case. In addition to the growing cold war with China, TikTok has also run afoul of U.S. privacy regulations before. Specifically, ByteDance was hit with a $5.7 million fine for collecting info and data from minors younger than 13.
In tandem with Trump’s threats to ban, the DOJ and FTC are claiming that TikTok hasn’t upheld the promises they had to make in order to keep operating after that last fine.
So is Trump relatliating against China?
Is he retaliating against young people and domestic political adversaries?
Nope, but he’d probably be happy with us thinking that he is. It fits the image he’s cultivated, and I doubt he’ll correct us by pointing out that he has no such power to enact petty grudges as federal policy. Those petty grudges, after all, are his entire campaign platform.