TikTok is an addictive app that, for years, has provided the Chinese Communist Party with direct access to millions of Americans. Owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, TikTok is used to provide a monsoon of CCP-approved propaganda while handing the Chinese government access to the data of TikTok’s international users, including location and biometric information such as “faceprints and voiceprints.”
In the spring of 2024 — what feels like a lifetime ago — the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), targeting TikTok. Signed into law by Joe Biden that April and upheld by the Supreme Court, the legislation requires a ban of TikTok in the United States on Jan. 19, 2025, unless ByteDance gives up control of the app.
According to my calendar, it seems that Jan. 19, 2025, has long since passed, and yet TikTok — with data still flooding back into the clutches of the CCP — continues to churn out communist propaganda across the country to millions of young Americans.
Why? Well, the fact that the White House recently unveiled its own TikTok profile tells you all you need to know about their view of the bipartisan PAFACA …
Indeed, since the deadline, the Trump administration has announced unconstitutional delay after unconstitutional delay with absolutely no regard for the legislature, while Congress has fecklessly cowered in the shadows while the executive branch ignores its fundamental purpose. Now — months after TikTok should have been lawfully banned — we’re hearing Trump-esque announcements of a deal looming just behind the nearest tree.
Trump is now expected to sign an agreement — an agreement that has yet to be completed or confirmed, by the way — that would give American investors majority control over TikTok, while tasking Oracle with securing its users’ data, with ByteDance maintaining a minority stake in the company and with one ByteDance representative on a new board of directors. Meanwhile, the existing algorithm — the algorithm that churns out Chinese propaganda to your children — will be copied and leased to the supposedly divested TikTok, with the promise that China will not have any access to American user data.
Sorry, this is a joke.
Yes, Trump is correct in saying that TikTok helped him win the 2024 election, and that the platform has “tremendous value,” but that doesn’t give him the right to ignore the democratic decision of the American people — through their representatives in Congress — by continuously disregarding the law in pursuit of his latest golden deal.
Sure, such a deal — if it even materializes — will be vastly financially beneficial to many of his closest allies who just so happen to be waiting to assume partial control of TikTok. But may I remind the White House that the role of the president of the United States is to enforce the laws put forth by Congress, and not to treat our national security and our greatest adversary — China — as players in his global version of “The Apprentice.”
At this point, I’ve lost hope that TikTok will actually be banned, and I have little faith that the billions of lines of code that control TikTok will be sufficiently audited to ensure that the CCP does not maintain a window into the lives of millions of Americans. But even if our data is closed off to the Chinese government, let’s not forget: The algorithm responsible for indoctrinating the next generation of American citizens will stay exactly the same, no matter what flag is hastily pasted onto the company letterhead.
If the algorithm lives on, so does China’s grip on your children.
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