Everyone has a Facebook page, or at least most do. While there was a time I spent far too much of my day posting status updates and looking up old high school classmates as their names occurred to me, I barely use my page anymore. Facebook, once the cutting edge of social media , is now old hat. As is the case with any old-hat institution, they’re doing their best to prevent the inevitable: their being overtaken by the next big thing.

Think what you will of TikTok. There isn’t a more impactful social media platform on the future of the country. It might not be the most important platform of the moment — that honor currently resides with Twitter , if only because so many journalists treat it as their sounding board and source material — but TikTok has our children, and with them lies the future.

You can see why Facebook is terrified of the video app (remember MySpace and Friendster?) and why they’re using all they have to stave off the fate that awaits everything seen as “parent cool” — the ultimate aging-out of their users.

I'm no fan of TikTok, and I worry about the possibility of a foreign government getting access to my personal data. But the reality is that all of our data are already available through dozens of global data brokers that track our online activity. And nearly every institution, including our own government, has seen data breaches to the point that everyone’s information is likely out there somewhere.

But Facebook’s parent company, Meta, recognizes that the political arguments against TikTok are compelling and is using them in its campaign to slow TikTok’s advance.

In other words, Facebook is trying to undercut a competitor by reminding lawmakers that TikTok’s parent company is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party because it is based in China. TikTok, naturally, denies this. The bottom line is that the public is well aware of all of this and can choose whether or not to let their children use it, rather than Facebook urging its allies to use government power to make that decision for everyone.

To be sure, TikTok’s ties to China are a legitimate concern. But Facebook doesn’t really believe that. If it did, then perhaps the company would reconsider its own financial ties to China, which consist of hefty ad revenue from Chinese companies and lucrative deals in which Facebook has agreed to hand over data to firms there.

In 2018, Meta racked up more than $5 billion in ads from China alone , making it the company’s second-largest source of revenue, with the United States topping that list.

Likewise, Facebook is quick to point out TikTok’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, but it has many of its own.

“ Facebook Gave Data Access to Chinese Firm Flagged by U.S. Intelligence ,” screamed a headline in the New York Times from June 2018. According to the story, Facebook “has data-sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese electronics companies, including a manufacturing giant that has a close relationship with China’s government … The agreements, which date to at least 2010, gave private access to some user data to Huawei, a telecommunications equipment company that has been flagged by American intelligence officials as a national security threat.”

That’s not something Meta would like to be reminded of, I wouldn’t think.

Neither is this headline, “ Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into China ,” from the New York Times in late 2016. The story reports Facebook “has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas” and “was created to help Facebook get into China.”

As the previously cited story about the $5 billion in ad revenue proves, this strategy clearly worked.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. I used to love social media and now find it to be more antisocial than anything else. But I do not like hypocrisy.

People are, and should be, free to make their own decisions about how to handle their personal information and which platforms to share it with. I highly doubt their choices would be similar to mine or vice versa. I don’t want to make those choices for anyone except my children, and I’m not about to let anyone else make mine for me. I do, however, think you should have all the information out there when you make yours so you can act according to your own conscience.

Derek Hunter is a nationally syndicated radio host, podcaster, and author of Outrage, INC: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism and Hollywood. Follow him on Twitter  @derekahunter .