2016 was bad enough. We can't let this happen again.
The tl-dr
For the headline tl-dr above the fold if skimming this Diary, there’s been a serious and dangerous misunderstanding fuelling the proposed TikTok ban in the House panel (a lot of Dem votes) already costing us dearly, just when we have momentum—as of 2024, as a lot of us admittedly are learning it’s evolved into a business app now critical for the livelihoods of a massive number of Americans and jobs, esp small businesses and shops connecting to clients (170 million users in just the US even by low estimates). And an important tool for grass roots actions, including documenting Putin’s Ukraine atrocities and helping women connect with health providers on sensitive issues.
So although better regulation of all social media would be welcomed, this ban proposal is a strategic miscalculation and vote-killer by threatening such a fundamental decision-maker for voters, and the real danger of costing us the youth vote. We’d ironically be making the same mistake Trump did in 2020, yet far worse now. For any Congress members and staffers lurking on DK (or those who can reach them), this is a political land-mine with potential for disaster in November and it must be stopped now. A lot here and it’s a team effort but we tried to avoid too much redundance, so please think through at least a few of these points, this is not something we can blunder into in the highest stakes US election in 160 years.
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Edit: On thewho’s good advice, summarizing all the dashed points together as a short executive summary before getting into each one.
Executive summary
As things have developed, the TikTok ban proposal hits at the livelihoods of millions of critical voters esp in Swing States we need, targets an information source that’s been mobilized for many progressive causes and citizen journalism, jeopardizes the crucial youth vote of Millennials and Zoomers that Dems need to break through in the Purple States, hurts our own fundraising and organization (including for Taylor Swift’s mass voter registration and President Biden’s own team for the SOTU), is legally suspect (and the kind of attainder precedent unscrupulous Republicans would be happy to use against Dem-supporting companies), threatens a trade war that would hurt the economy and markets in an election year, all for the sake of faux nationalist signaling on an app that’s now internationally (and heavily American) owned and run.
This may not quite be a political third rail yet, but it’s scarily close to becoming one in the way it would alienate and enrage millions of the very voters we need to win. This is long but the confused thinking that’s leading us into this mine-field poses a much greater threat to our electoral chances than usually understood, and we need to have clearer strategic thinking in general to avoid falling for other pitfalls, in the most important US election since 1860 or 1864.
The dashed point by point details on why this is a political mine-field for Democrats
----- The top serious red flag here, and again in being fair this has been a learning for a lot of us too—the social media and business world moves fast and the TikTok the House committee is talking about in 2024 is a world different than the one in 2022 or 2020. The cute and often annoying pet and entertainment videos are still there, but it’s more of a business app now especially for the kinds of upstart and small businesses expanding and connecting with clientele in the US and overseas. First rule esp for a new business or seller getting off the ground is “connect with your clients where they are”—with today’s tech this is a global clientele as we’ll get to—and even the establishment business press is pointing out how established companies and new entrepreneurs stay viable and build by using the app to market. And unsurprisingly with the growth of e-commerce and small sellers on online marketplaces, an ever growing portion of the US population makes critical income through this, either as a main occupation or side job.
It’s bad optics and political malpractice to push policies that threaten people’s livelihoods, and the House committee seems have forgotten or failed to consider that. Voters can have varying stands on issues but when a poorly thought out policy (that accomplishes nothing) hits their ability to support themselves and their families, Americans won’t just turn their wrath harshly against the reps who propose it. They’re going to go out of their way to hurt them and bring them down. (Even after they lose office.) As any of us who’ve canvassed well know, this gets really personal for voters when there’s a clear cause and effect between a policy blunder and them struggling to make a living.
And even outside business use and main or supplemental income streams, TikTok has spread as a tool in other critical areas. Such as for muck-raking citizen journalism (including documenting Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine, where it’s been a useful tool), teaching lessons or meetings. And, sharing concerns online, connecting US women and girls with health providers on sensitive topics (even more important after Dobbs) or forming work or sports teams, valuable relationships that can’t just be replaced. Even just the threat of rashly shutting this down is a huge no-no for a party in an election year, especially when we are incumbent in the White House.
Whatever the supporters of something like this—and there’s no silent majority here based on the usage numbers we’ll soon show—the opponents of a ban are going to be far more passionate and motivated as single-issue voters because, for so many of them this is their very livelihood. Most Americans would be indifferent at best and the headlines would quickly fade, but for Americans taking a big economic hit in these times, they wouldn’t forget or much less forgive. Democrats need to have this at the top of our radars in our campaigns, and it’s something President Biden was so skillful in addressing in the SOTU on Thursday. And these crucial voters are going to go for the political jugular of ban supporters if a Congressional fiat--by members of Congress who don’t “get” the tech, as seen in those cringy and unintentional funny social media hearings last year—makes it even harder to make a living. Especially with housing, daycare, their kids’ college and groceries and healthcare already harder to afford as it is.
---- Related, another effect of the ban would be a serious hit to the US economy in an election year, even before the potential devastation from a trade war. Reported numbers vary but from the January hearings the app has 170 million American users, some say at least 220 million TikTok downloads in the US. Globally there were 3.5 billion TikTok downloads (the most popular app) already in 2022 and varying sources show anywhere from 4-4.7 billion globally as of around mid 2023. Even if we use the lower numbers that’s over half the US total population and a big proportion of the world at some point using the app. In reality even higher, given the large fraction of population in both cases either too sick or too young (or just not having a smartphone or computer) to even be able to sign up for it.
And that app and its algo have evolved together with other services, such as online marketplaces, auto-translators and currency converters (and other social media). So that the short videos from American businesses—both small and large businesses—and small upstart sellers (both e-commerce and physical goods) reach potential clients across the US and the world, in a way they couldn’t a decade ago without a lot more barriers to entry. Again, the why doesn’t matter—it’s just one of those facts on the ground relevant to US business and US voting now, which is why it matters to Democrats.
This is a massive amount of American commerce, and it’s part of why the job market and US business activity stayed relatively resilient last year even with the Fed’s interest rate hikes to fight inflation. The landscape for entrepreneurs has changed so fast that a small American business owner or e-commerce merchant, of anything from Tshirts to webpage templates can now sell internationally to a potential customer base of billions of clients, that the app helps to link the product to the niche clientele likely to buy. This may seem minor to those of us not doing this actively ourselves but it’s a lot of extra money to a lot of Americans and another source of jobs. (Most US job creation is small businesses like this, not big companies.)
We have no idea how the algo works and that’s irrelevant to the point of the Diary because the numbers speak for themselves—the House committee in this poorly thought out ban proposal has not kept up with the times or how American business has changed. Beyond the political disaster of ripping out so many Americans’ livelihoods, the scale of this would be a big hit to the US economy generally. And it would put American vendors and businesses at a terrible disadvantage to foreign competitors, able to market their products in the void left by American sellers cut off by such rash policy. Causing a worsening trade deficit and a hard hit to the ambitious startups and entrepreneurs hustling to grow their businesses, the life blood of the US economic system and a key to our advantage in the past. This would be a complete disaster for Democrats in general, most especially in an election year.
----- Costing us the all-important and fast growing youth vote among Millennials and Gen-Z. This is the more obvious reason the TikTok ban talk is a dangerous political trap for Dems, even if the main reasons have changed as of 2024 and the business landscape. We had a historically good performance in the 2022 mid-terms in big part because of stronger support from young voters in both the margin of victory and in turnout. And we’re going to need every single one of those votes and more in November if we’re to prevent a second Trump victory and the collapse of American democracy. It really is that serious, and we cannot afford to anger this demographic.
It goes without much saying that TikTok is especially popular for younger voters, and even it were just “that annoying app with the cute and annoying entertainment and pet videos”, we’d be alienating and turning off a huge and critical part of the Democratic voting base. But as pointed out it’s far more than that now. And Millennials and Gen-Z are a huge part of that entrepreneurial base that depends on the connections from the app and have a lot of business capital invested in those connections and relationships with a growing clientele. They’d be enraged by a dumb policy hitting their incomes when they’re already struggling to get on the economic ladder, with costs for housing and healthcare so high and while they’re already dealing with student loans.
And it gets worse, since this kind of muddled policy thinking—clearly failing to keep up with the tech and changes in the business world—just goes back and strengthens the criticisms of a “gerontocracy” and how Democrats are out of touch with younger voters. This would be especially frustrating because President Biden’s SOTU did such a great job of shutting down that accusation. He and his staff did an amazing job showing how Dems in fact, are paying close attention to stresses on cost of living, and changes in tech and business relevant esp for young Americans. Now with this own-goal in the House committee, we’re eroding those gains and already raising new doubts among younger voters that we cannot afford.
---- The loss of the influencer support and networks from a foolish policy like this—and the organizing that’s helped Taylor Swift (and President Biden himself) tap into support bases and do mass voter registration. This has become such an important factor that even the legacy media is paying attention.
DKos has had a lot of articles on how Taylor Swift and the mass network of Swifties online (both on their own and with Taylor’s encouraging) have been helping with mass voter registration drives. And as things are done these days, a massive amount of this happens on TikTok, because that’s where the Millennials and Zoomers whose votes we need are. Taylor’s transformation as a progressive activist—supported by her fans on social media—has been incredibly important for us because of her focus on overturning the Supreme Court’s outrageous Dobbs decision and Republican war on women and girls. With Taylor herself expressing how terrified she was of the damage Dobbs would do, not just on abortion but on women’s basic rights to their own bodies.
A key to successful Democratic organization efforts like this has been connections and support from influencers on TikTok and other social media, including for President Biden’s own messages and preparations for the SOTU on Thursday. It’s a big reason just why we’ve been so successful since SOTU in winning over so many new voters and making such big gains in fundraising. The TikTok ban talk is a threat not only to these influencers’ very livelihoods, but also the social media network we’ve spent years building to get Democrats elected, raise funds and win support for our policies. That would disappear overnight and devastate our chances in November and from then on.
----- The ban proposal doesn’t even do what the House panel seems to fantasize it does. The TikTok ownership and leadership are now complex and international, with a lot of American ownership and direction especially since 2020. This in addition to the huge pools of income by American businesses using the app within their business operations and top influencers, overwhelmingly Americans. And then like pointed out, the huge amount of business American entrepreneurs and small businesses now do selling things overseas, that they’d be locked out of (and disadvantaged to foreign competitors) with a ban attempt. It’s nothing unusual for House panels to almost rubber stamp things to sound “tough on China” or at least not sound “soft on China”—it’s part of the almost high school like peer pressure of the “Beltway-itis” syndrome in the next point. But at least some of these bills actually are, and they do it the right way. The ban proposal does not—it’s a lame distraction from the smarter policies that do work here.
It should be pointed out as loathesome as the CCP is, China is not Russia and the policy challenges and pressure points very different. Russia’s offensive war, interference in US elections and even coveting Alaska make it clear it’s a direct threat and a big part of why Americans do support all help needed for Ukraine, while China’s situation is more complicated—the tough talk on China obsession matters far less for Americans than Beltway insiders think. Unlike Putin’s goal of imperialism and basically making Russia the world’s biggest gas station, China is linked into the international order and so like the US, interested in maintaining global trade. They’re doing an awkward neutrality now and not happy with Putin’s recklessness, and even they get a few important things right—above all the historic push for renewables even as the world’s factory, that should’ve been lead by us (thank you again, idiot Republicans).
But it’s a good thing for the climate and global security, and long term that shift away from dependence on resource powers like Russia is as important as anything for Ukraine and the world’s security too. (And the last thing we need is to drive China into Russia’s arms—even Nixon and Reagan understood you have to isolate and focus on the biggest threat, which is Putin’s Russia and its aggression.) Human rights abuses absolutely have to be confronted, there and elsewhere. This includes at home, with our own issues with the incarceration rate and de facto prison slavery from the 13th amendment, struggles on native American reservations, lack of healthcare, the GOP war on women and discrimination against minorities. And these need to be called out equally in China. A trade war and unfocused antagonism are counterproductive to these goals, but China’s own investment in world trade helps make it a much more rational and cautious status quo power—and vulnerable to the right kind of focus pressure.
Ironically, the most important bill now that does clearly achieve this—the supplemental aid bill with funding for Taiwan and other regional allies—has yet to be passed. China for many reasons is cautious and reluctant to rock the boat on the Strait, but like anywhere else, there are factions on it. The supplemental aid bill is exactly the pressure we need—increasing the cost of any rash action to shut up any hotheads and preserve the status quo. So the House committee is basically stuck backing an empty faux-nationalist gesture that would do far more damage to Americans than China or any other country. All the while the House has yet to act on the single most important bill in a decade to provide real assistance to American allies in East Asia and stabilize the region. For this reason too, Democrats in the House need to avoid the bright shiny distraction of the TikTok ban proposal, and focus all efforts on the real check to China—getting the supplemental aid bill passed.
----- On that related point, the TikTok ban proposal is a bad case of Beltway-itis syndrome, that bubble and echo chamber of information that too often swallows up both parties and disconnects them from the realities of Americans outside. Wrapped up in trendy Beltway memes a world apart from what actually motivates American voters. The bipartisan nature of the House committee vote is unsurprising because unfortunately, while the House GOP has a way of outdoing itself in the stupid sweepstakes, Beltway-itis and its strange peer pressure hits both parties in the insular and often confused information environment inside the Beltway. It leads to hype getting whipped up about stands—like the faux-nationalist signaling here—that in reality just don’t attract much interest or support outside the Beltway from Americans too busy dealing with real world challenges keeping a roof over their heads and feeding their families. Except in fuelling a lot of opposition and resentment among those who are affected.
And as shown by the embarrassing ignorance on display in the social media hearings last year, the Beltway-itis is made worse by the presumptousness on display for example, in those social media Congressional hearings last year. They were not only cringy enough to inspire ruthless mocking on SNL, but humiliating for the reputation of the US globally. As reminder, much of Congress showed they had no idea whether social media is “plugged into the Internet” or how wi-fi works while presuming to draft basic tech policy. It’s only made worse when some law-makers get arrogant enough to try to rush through bills like this without even pretending to talk to the people affected or do their homework on all the complex repercussions. It’s this ignorance and disconnect from the world outside that has created a dangerous new information bubble, and Democrats risk walking into a political trap.
The clickbait headlines aren’t helping either, and too many House Dems are being gas-lit that the furious phone calls from constituents on the TikTok ban proposal are “just mad kids protesting”—as if (even then) it makes any political sense to write off a huge chunk of the youth vote when those “mad kids voting” is what saved Democrats from electoral disaster in 2020 and 2022. Ignoring, minimizing or misjudging these objections from constituents do us damage, but it’s even worse here because again, it’s not just the mad kids this is pissing off. The app has a broader demo in all US generations now and across all kinds of occupations and businesses, including the larger ranks of Americans whose livelihoods depend on it, all votes we cannot afford to lose in November and beyond.
----- The proposal doesn’t even pretend to address the changes and restrictions Americans would like to have on social media. It’s no secret that a lot of us parents and teachers grind our teeth a lot at our kids and other relatives (including plenty of grown ups) who get lost in social media these days, and TikTok is undoubted a big pet peeve. Like we said, we’re not fans and really don’t care much for it at all. But that irritation extends to all social media now, and in a lot of ways Instagram, Snap, Facebook and especially the disgusting version of Twitter (oh, sorry “X”) under Elon Musk can be even worse. Full of distracting stupidity and misinformation, so much that they were weaponized by Putin and Russian shills to help tip the 2016 election against Hillary, and leading to the Trump disaster and the neo-fascist Republican Party that remains a threat well beyond Trump alone.
This is another source of irritation at this useless legislative peacocking in the House panel. A smart, carefully thought out bill to restrict and better regulate social media in general would be popular with a lot of Americans. This is the kind of professional law-making we desperately need right now. Instead, we get a proposal doing nothing for that, does nothing to address Americans general concerns about social media, does little other than pretending to be “tough on China” while failing to do even that. (All while the supplemental aid bill that actually would do it remains stuck.)
The supposed security arguments are hollow here too. Like Ja’han Jones points out, all social media pose security risks because they suck up mass information that can be misdirected to both private and public bodies, all over the world they’re used. That’s a part of their very business model, and unfortunately this has already led to bad things. It isn’t just people like Snowden who’ve blown the whistle here, Facebook (Meta’s) data misuse had terrible consequences in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, giving us the “gift” of Brexit and Bannon and Trump himself taking advantage.
Data and security leaks in social media are a problem and a well put together regulatory bill would be welcomed, applying to all apps. But this ban proposal is an empty gesture that doesn’t even pretend to do that. It’s a useless cop-out, even worse gives an excuse for false pats on the back about pretending to do something that distracts from actually doing something on this problem. Jones also makes the important point that this kind of thing has a less than subtle stench of anti-Asian racism with these double standards and hypocrisy. As reminder, the vote of Asian Americans is a huge reason we scored those narrow and historic Electoral College victories in 2020 in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. And they’ll be even more important this November, when Texas and North Carolina will also be competitive and we have few votes to lose (even if they just stay home). We cannot afford to offend these voters with poorly thought out legislation.
----- The sheer futility on display here. The legal basis for the TikTok ban proposal is nonexistent—and a dangerous precedent for Democrats even it wasn’t—and ultimately futile as the tech evolves and users get around it. Trump’s ban collapsed in the courts as did the clumsy attempt in Montana. Nicole Narea’s article in Vox does a good report on just why in her words, the Constitutional “bar for such a justification is necessarily very high.” Making this House panel ban proposal a futile effort that’ll only succeed in alienating many of our own voters if Dems support it. That turns out to be a good thing, because with the neo-fascist and unscrupulous Trumpian GOP that truly is the most dangerous threat to American democracy now, such a precedent would quickly be weaponized against us.
Reminder, as pointed out TikTok is international now with a lot of American investment, direction, profit making and use in American businesses and with American influencers. It’s partly “American” just like other tech apps invented in the US are partly “foreign” with their own investors, users and directors overseas. If an international (and part American owned and run) company like TikTok can be arbitrarily banned it means any app or company can be arbitrarily banned by the same vague reasoning about “security issues”. It’s irrelevant if the arguments are sound are fair—the GQP doesn’t care, and if (Mother Earth forbid) they gained enough federal power, they wouldn’t hesitate to use the flimsiest fig leaf to push such bans against any company seen to be favoring Democrats or “wokeness”. It’s basically Ron DeSantis nonsense on steroids, weaponized as an attainder against rivals to his party or even to his cronies profiting from GQP corruption.
And even the ban attempts that have lasted a little longer have been futile. It’s too easy to use proxies and other tech to get around them, and there’s no practical way to enforce them. This, ironically would help to limit some of the damage a ban attempt could do as pointed out before. But there’s a problem—the bypassing would still involve a lot of delays and disruptions, particularly to the Americans who use TikTok as part of their client outreach for critical income and business purposes, and they’d still have every reason to politically penalize ban proponents. And still worse, in the intervening period before bypasses and or court bans strike a ban down, countries overseas would have a license they’d need to flip things around on us. It would be a trade war much more damaging than the one Trump himself launched and helped boot him from office.
----- About that trade war that would come from this—we’ve saved perhaps the most immediate danger to Democrats in November in the last point. Even if a TikTok ban wouldn’t last long, and likely couldn’t even pass Congress, simply the gesture of passing the bill in even one house of Congress would create an opening for retaliation abroad. Foreign governments from authoritarian ones to democracies struggling with corruption would love to get their hands on the assets of American companies selling to their citizens. Including basically forcing sales of US subsidiaries abroad, or banning them all together to help whatever local brand they have to get a monopoly. And here the irony—that foolish idea is precisely what this ban proposal is proposing, a short sighted move that invites the rest of the world to do to us in kind, friend or foe. That’s how trade wars work.
Problem here is that if the US is seen to be provoking and starting the trade conflict with the first move, it gives both a legal and apparent moral justification for other countries to hit us with the same, as a “tit for tat” retaliation. Other countries haven’t done things like this precisely because a trade war, in almost every case has a way of making all sides lose. So they don’t rock the boat. But with a ban proposal like this, we would be the ones opening the Pandora’s Box. Trump’s own moves against Huawei and other companies have already cracked open that door, but an outright ban or forced sale like this would force it wide open, and retaliation would be swift. Get ready for countries overseas demanding that GM, Apple, Microsoft, GE or AT&T force sales of its branches overseas, or be banned at all because “the US made the first move”. And in many of their biggest markets globally.
Trade wars are a bad outcome anytime but a disaster in an election year—another big contributor to Trump’s loss in 2020, as the retaliation from other countries hit the economies of Swing States, aggravating the hits from the pandemic. But a trade war now would be far worse. The stock markets have been trading at historically high valuations (partly as hedge against inflation and US dollar fall), so not hard to see their vulnerability. And a trade war is one of those things Wall St. and American companies fear most, especially with the retaliations and loss of markets for our firms. Even just the hint of a trade war, for ex. with a legislature overseas preparing a bill in retaliation for ours in the House panel, can be dangerous for the volatile markets. And even if the Federal Reserve responded to a crash with more quant easing liquidity or interest rate cuts, that would just mean yet another wave of US inflation that would be a disaster in November.
For all these reasons the TikTok ban proposal has the potential to be the feared trigger for the dreaded “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” we’re all painfully familiar with by now. It has a much bigger significance and ability to enrage the voters we need than the House panel seems to have understood. And their headlong, unthinking push to rush the bill shows they haven’t thought through its consequences or the complexity of how the app and the US business world have changed. If this goes further, we’re facing a real risk of undoing all the gains we’ve made with Biden’s brilliant SOTU performance and the hard work and networking that lay the groundwork, and putting Dems at a serious disadvantage in November.
This is giving us unpleasant reminders of the 2016 disaster all over again and it’s why we’re speaking out so vehemently to get Dems in the House to slow down and think through this. We were among the many (Michael Moore included) sounding alarms about some of the critical missteps of Democrats, and not just in Hillary’s campaign that year. Especially about Hillary’s hawkishness on direct US involvement in regime change for Syria, that was registering poorly in the Battleground States—including Pennsylvania and Michigan—with many wary Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and families. But also with Obama’s own obsessive pushing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that Election Year’s version of outdoing the “tough on China” rhetoric, even as the TPP also landed with a thud in the Swing States. The result was disaster.
This tone deafness and blindness on evolving issues, and how they’re perceived by critical swathes of the electorate who aren’t being heard, are a big reason for the own-goals we’ve too often made. It’s also a sign of a lack of focus and organizational discipline that we need to have down here. And those own-goals as we know now, are what got Trump elected in 2016 and gave him 3 SCOTUS justices, with all the damage they continue to do. We cannot afford to mess this up again. Too many Dems in the House seem to be gas-lit that TikTok is a minor issue and a ban would do little more than annoy a few entertainers who wouldn’t put up too much of a fuss. But the evidence we’ve been seeing is it’s far, far bigger than this. And the app and the business world that’s grown around it has evolved in a way the House panel has been dangerously failing to understand.
This has the potential not only to cost us the youth vote, but deeply anger the major number of American small businesses and entrepreneurs (and the people they employ) for which the app is now closely worked into their very livelihoods. Added to all the broader dangers to the economy, legal issues and failure to address the kind of broad social media regulation that Americans really would support and get behind. As disgusting a blight on America as Trump is, he’s also a formidable campaigner, and like many loathesome demagogues before him he also has coat-tails. We simply cannot afford serious blunders and oversights where we’re tone-deaf to the realities of policies rushed along in rash actions pushed by Beltway-itis. This is a political mine-field we must not step into.
