Tic-Tok goes the clock…
Tic-Tok goes the clock of American capitalistic blasphemy and irony. The countdown begins for the demise of the global social media monster platform Tic-Tok, that has given American social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube a run for their money. A run in which they are losing.
Tic-Tok is a Chinese based firm that is beating out its competition. In American capitalism, when the big companies are losing they go to Washington and ask the government for help. And the government gives it to them. You’ve heard of free market capitalism, right?
In this case, the Biden administration has given Tic-Tok the ultimatum of either selling their company to a United States corporation or they will not be able to do business in the United States and must remove their platform. Congress held a hearing today claiming that national security is an issue with the platform because it is a Chinese based company. They made this claim with absolutely no evidence to show that the Tic-Tok platform has ever been compromised or has given away any of its use data to the Chinese government.
The CEO of Tic-Tok, Shou Zi Chew, testified passionately professing that there has never been a breach of United States’ user information and there is no proof that any of that information has ever been given to the Chinese government for any reason. In fact, he went on to say that Oracle, a United States based corporation, is tasked with holding the back end and storage of the platform and its data. No data goes through the platform to China or is sent to servers in China whatsoever. But, you know, when Congresspersons get a chance…
Where is the Smoke and Mirrors here? Well, let’s start with the numerous compromises of the Facebook platform, or numerous Wall Street financial firms, with hundreds of millions of its user’s data being stolen, as well as, Facebook’s proven over reach in our political system during the Trump/Biden campaign.
Congress used the platform to give the political talking points of them being concerned about the data of the American public being breached while giving no evidence that this concern is based on any event. However, the Congressional panel failed to mention or discuss their lack of concern when any United States financial institution, or Facebook, or other American based corporations that have had their user’s data breached.
I don’t know. I don’t use Tik-Tok so I have no skin in this game, but I am just so tired of the hypocrisy of the American body politic. The constant lies from both sides of the fence is so old. The patronizing tone and the average ignorance of our political players makes me wonder how we ever got to this point. The American political machine and its players in Washington use the declining attention span of our society with short sound bites.
Once Andy Warhol said that “In the future everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.” But, in today’s social media world it has come down to 15 seconds.
On Instagram.
Tic-Tok apparently gives you 10 minutes.