Commentary: The TikTok question is being swept under the rug

ONE IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE FOR US SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES

Perhaps the concerns were overblown. The TikTok “ban” certainly came in a hurry, shoehorned into a broader national security bill and motivated in part by the concern – not backed up with data – that the algorithm was intentionally pushing anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian content after the Oct 7, 2023 terror attack. 

The inability to know whether that was true is perhaps cause enough: When everyone’s TikTok “for you” page can be vastly different, it’s nearly impossible to take a data-driven approach to understanding what is being funnelled to the nation’s eyes and ears, and how. Instead, we often learn through tragic circumstances.

Other critics of the ban argue that America’s homegrown social media companies aren’t much better. 

The past couple of years have shown a troubling regression in outsiders’ abilities to monitor what’s going on. Meta shut a programme used by researchers to monitor the most shared posts. Elon Musk imposed prohibitively expensive restrictions on X’s API, locking out researchers who used to monitor the ebb and flow of information across the network, which these days is an even more active engine room for bigotry and hate. 

But the difference – and it’s not an unimportant one – is that when those companies do wrong, their bosses are answerable to US law and often find themselves in front of Congress to be held accountable (in theory). When wrongdoing is kept secret, American employees, such as Frances Haugen, often turn to American media to blow the whistle.