What you want and what can be: TikTok

 In a moment that might cause the sanest among us to question whether or not we have slipped into an alternate universe, Democrats and Republicans have found common ground on something other than the breathability of oxygen (and if we're honest, some of those in Congress seem to enjoy stomping their feet and holding their breath until their faces turn blue).  When there is bipartisan agreement, something can happen, right?  Right?  Not so fast.  Suppose we all come to universal agreement on how awesome it would be to eradicate the common cold.  Well, presto!  Bipartisanship shall work its magical mumbo jumbo and presto change-o, rearrange-o, begone, common cold!  Bipartisanship commands it.  Or not.  This week, Democrats and Republicans found mutual agreement, although perhaps for slightly different reasons, on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad app called "TikTok," as opposed to all the good social media platforms, like, um... gimme a sec... I'm blanking here.  Anyway, TikTok actually does have some particularly abhorrent features, from the fact that the Chinese government is almost certainly using it to collect data to the fact that its algorithm has the most deleterious effect on one's attention span and cognitive processes to its rapid rabbit-holing (which sounds very bad, as I type it) to some of the ideological misinformation that is particularly dangerous for kids... yes, TikTok probably is the fattest kid at fat camp.  Which social media app is the thinnest kid at fat camp, and did I just commit a horrible wrong?  Is that where we're going here?

Humans are tool users.  We invent tools.  Most tools have uses.  Some tools are especially useless tools.  We call them "university administrators," but most tools have at least some use, even if those uses are highly specialized.  As I scan my desk, I have a picture frame.  That is a highly specialized tool.  Could I devise other uses?  Sure.  I could wedge open a door, prop up an uneven piece of furniture, use the edge to scrape something, pop out the glass and use the edge of the glass as a sharp implement in an emergency, use the flat edge as a very weak hammer... I don't know.  I could keep going, I suppose, but these are just MacGyver-isms.  It is a specialized tool.  And I suppose I am undercutting my point, aren't I?  Really, it does one thing well, and several other things poorly, but that's up to me.  The frame itself is just a tool, as is anything that we, as humans, create.  Do social media platforms have uses?  As much as it pains me to admit it, yes, and while I have no such accounts, I will acknowledge a benefit, even to a weirdo hermit like me.  Consider music.  Many brilliant musicians make clips on platforms like TikTok, which then migrate to youtube, where archaic critters like me can watch them.

The distribution of art is a valuable function.  A tool that promotes the distribution of art is a valuable tool, and right now, there is a contingent pushing back against any proposal to ban TikTok because they are artists who use the platform to distribute their art.  If you consider art to be not only valuable, but perhaps the highest achievement of humanity-- as I do-- then how can you not sympathize?

As deleterious as TikTok is, and as problematic as the app is in every way that I described, it is a tool.  A tool is neither good nor bad, but in its use.  Artists are using it for good.  The Chinese government is probably using it for ill, and the algorithm is dangerous for children, and by, "children," I mean, "humans."

And so I return to Socrates.  Socrates did not believe in the value of written language.  He believed in the value of the spoken word and interpersonal communication.  Written language is a crutch, and reliance on this crutch impairs memory, and hence thought.  Indeed, Socrates was probably right, and yet written language provides so many benefits that few today would argue Socrates's position.  TikTok is not the written word, and those of us concerned with TikTok are not likely to appear as Socrates years later, warning about the dangers of one of the most important developments in human history, yet the point about Socrates remains important.  A tool is neither good nor bad, but merely there.  It is all in the application, and one could imagine an alternate universe in which TikTok did not operate like so, but merely for the distribution of art.  That alternate universe is called "China."  Hmm...

Yet whatever one wants is irrelevant, compared to what can be.  As Marcus Aurelius said, to seek the impossible is madness.  What do we want that is achievable with respect to TikTok?

It's bad!  Ban it!

Has that ever worked?

Yeah, but this time, it's a thing that I don't like!  So it has to work!

What I ask you to do right now is to scan your memory.  Consider the times when someone with whom you disagree has proposed banning a thing, which you do not think should be banned.  You have responded with, "yeah, I know you want to ban it, but it won't work, so your proposal is unreasonable."

I know you have.  Everybody does this.  And then people forget that footwear, unlike cheap jackets, ain't reversible.  The other way around doesn't feel so good.  You want to ban a thing that the other side doesn't, and you reverse positions on the question of thing-bans.

Right now, both Democrats and Republicans at the congressional level are looking towards a TikTok ban.  I can see a case.  I can see a benefit to TikTok, for artists, but I can see a case.  Have I told you my position on TikTok?  No.  I have made a case in both directions.  I encourage everyone to do this.  Think about every side.

But what about practicality?  What about the principle of thing-bans?

Suppose Congress tries to pass a law targeting TikTok.  That will be very hard, but suppose they succeed.  Suppose, for example, that they get Apple and Google to stop distributing the app.  What then?

Well, that's it!

Here's the thing.  Of the bans.  And the question of the thing-ban.  Who, in particular, uses TikTok?  Kids.  Who engages in piracy?  Not Somalians.  Well, yes, Somalians, or at least they were a few years back, but we haven't heard much about that lately.  I mean digital piracy.  Kids.  Who will get and use the app anyway?  Precisely the people you want to not use the app.

Banning the app from government devices seems easy and sensible.  Anything beyond that?  That is far more difficult.  Thing-bans are never as easy as saying, hey, let's ban this thing!

But I don't like this thing!  It's a bad thing!  It's doing bad!

The laws of economics do not care about your normative assessments of the thing in question, merely the demand for the thing in question.  It is, perhaps, too easy for me without children to say that parents should not let their kids have smartphones, but they shouldn't.  Yes, the kids will throw fits.

Tough.  Don't put it on the government.  This is on you.  And if you do it right, it will do more than anything the government can ever hope to accomplish.

I wonder if Marina Krupkina's latest has made it to youtube yet.  Let's hear from this kid.