Banning Tik Tok is missing the forest for the trees. The fact that having an app on your phone is able to hemorrhage so much sensitive data about individuals is indicative of a serious lack of security in our technology. Phone manufacturers and regulators are taking almost zero steps to safeguard our anonymity online. Our location, personal information, and even the contents of our camera roll are within easy reach.
A smart law would attack the root of the problem: enshrining a right to privacy into law and working with phone manufacturers to give users complete control over the information they share with external sources! We are in tech-hell right now. We buy the phones but do not control them. They spy on us.
I have learned so many things from Tik Tok and similar Vine-style content platforms. I would not be baking a loaf of bread every day or experimenting with wood working had I not been exposed to these things through short form video content. Sending Instagram videos to my friends is one of my favorite ways to stay connected with people online, and some of them have made me laugh harder than I have laughed in years.
I believe that banning Tik Tok is a serious breach of my right to free speech and expression as enshrined in the constitution. Banning Tik Tok is also a gross admission by our lawmakers that they have no interest in tackling the lack of privacy that US citizens have while engaging with the technology that has been forced on us since birth. Let the Luddites crawl into their caves–the answer to our modern problems is not to arbitrarily ban things… we must push forward with a critical eye and a desire to live free.