Tik-Tik-Tik-Tok

 "No doubt you have heard the hyperventilated warnings about the evils of TikTok, a short-form video hosting service out of China that’s posted 130 million user downloads in the US that log on an average of 90 minutes a day. Sounds like quite a success story. So what’s the problem?"

 “Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.” Phaedrus


As practiced in Washington and perfected by MSM, ‘things aren’t always as they appear’. The staggering record of DC lying, misdirection, disinformation, obfuscation, corruption and illegal contortions contrary to the Constitution and the Rule of Law is sufficient to re-write the Phaedrus cliché to state: “things are never as they appear.”

No doubt you have heard the hyperventilated warnings about the evils of TikTok, a short-form video hosting service out of China that’s posted 130 million user downloads in the US that log on an average of 90 minutes a day. Sounds like quite a success story. So what’s the problem?

The caterwauling politicians, state and federal, want you to believe “It’s China!” Recently, the ‘news’ reported formerly- flaccid- toward- anything- China, President Biden, ‘hardening his stance backing legislation for a total ban’. Well! What’s that all about?

Glenn Greenwald reported Luke David Johnson, self-described ‘prolific TikTok user’ opining on Twitter one should be skeptical about the popular (Washington) narrative, how both parties are so eager to ban the app of choice for 130 million users. What changed that caused Biden to take this rarely seen opposition to anything China, especially something hugely popular?

Was it all the data TikTok has been gathering and shipping to Beijing? No, nothing they haven’t been doing all along and no different than ‘millions of other companies don’t harvest and sell in nice tidy little packages” to eager buyers world-wide to use for all sorts of legal and illegal exploitation. Most of the data is out there and freely available, only requiring the software to grab it. It’s highly improbable China would bother to develop an app for that when so many are already efficiently operating ubiquitously.

What China and TikTok did do was provide a platform for 130 million Americans to communicate with each other – and they do - an average of 90 minutes a day. As Johnson observed “That’s huge! Not to Americans communicating their ideas to one another but to the Administration in power”. That’s why the pending legislation is ‘bi-partisan’ because politicians and their parties know it is dangerous for Americans to freely communicate their ideas without their control. Is it the MSM ‘reporting’. OK Twitter? Sure. Facebook? Fine. The Twitter Files revealed broadcast and social media willfully take orders providing content control by the Government. Since Musk and the Twitter Files big reveal, maybe Twitter’s not so much anymore. But TikTok and unfettered communications outside of Federal control? Bad! Dangerous! A Threat to National Security! An Attack On Our Democracy!

Sure. Remember Phaedrus.


 

 


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