There are many terrifying things happening right now, but let’s not forget about this spectacularly dumb thing that is also, somehow, continuing.

Very interesting piece.

Is this story ever going to get less dumb?

I have always thought the TikTok ban was dumb, and it just seems to get dumber with every new development. It’s not that there aren’t salient arguments in there, it’s that they’re all buried under vibes and nonsense.

Not the headline I would have chosen, but very interesting argument here.

What a stupid thing this whole “banning TikTok” thing has proved to be.

I doubt this is as straightforward as the headline makes it sound, but there are lots of interesting points in this article.

Oh, so the moral panic is hypocritical, too.

Masnick puts this better than I could. This legislation is dumb, but this advocacy feels dumber.

Don’t love it when platforms shut down tools because they don’t like outside research.

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I think this is a much bigger deal than any purported security risk.

Rand Paul is very often wrong, but I always appreciate when he comes through.

Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of talking with Arianna Prothero at EducationWeek about Seattle Public Schools’ suing Snap, Alphabet, Meta, and ByteDance, and she ended up quoting me—and colleagues like Jeff Carpenter and Josh Rosenberg—in her article.

I appreciate that all three of us were quoted in the article, because Jeff and Josh both made points that I didn’t articulate as well in my conversation with Arianna. For example, Jeff’s comments summed up a lot of the complexities that have gone through my head:

Maybe it’s because of my area of research, but I think the headline here is misleading. Being a teacher on TikTok is one thing, and I’m not opposed to that. Putting your students on TikTok is entirely different, and I struggle to see that being ethically justified. Josh’s research is absolutely the right reference point here.

It isn’t that TikTok doesn’t pose a real threat, it’s that it’s not alone in doing so. In particular, I appreciate that this article points out that U.S. border agents REGULARLY SEARCH COMPUTERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS. So, yes, raise concerns, but be consistent instead of creating a moral panic around thus one app (which, by the way, would be a privacy threat even if it were totally owned by a U.S. company).

So, here’s a case where TikTok’s Chinese ownership is actually a really big deal—though, of course, YouTube and other U.S. companies have also been quicker to moderate than to archive material that could be valuable in a similar way.

The amount of data collected by TikTok is more concerning for the possibility that it could be fed to Chinese state officials, but it would be just as concerning if it could be fed to American state officials, and still pretty concerning if only fed to corporate officials.

Concern about privacy is good, but not when it’s Sinophobic posturing. Yes, what TikTok is doing is worrying and problematic, but Bode makes an important point here: If they aren’t willing to fix the broader infrastructure, stances like Rubio’s just come down to trying to score cheap political points.

Good writing here. Vague Sinophobia drives a lot of media and political concerns, and I appreciate Bode’s challenging of that here.

TikTok should not be protected from criticism, but it should not be subjected to this garbage either.

Content moderation is an awful job, and we shouldn’t forget the people doing it for us.