Pardon 170 Million TikTok Users for Dismissing the Biden DOJ

Senior Biden officials actively leaned on the most popular U.S. social media sites to restrain what they deemed “misinformation” about the novel coronavirus, along with the cruel, life and economy crushing governmental initiatives that were adjacent to the federal government’s efforts to “inform” Americans as they saw fit. What an insult to the American people.

It’s difficult to not think about how high federal officials acted with regard to the virus while considering the Department of Justice’s “forceful case” (Wall Street Journal) against TikTok. Supposedly it “collected data about its users’ views on sensitive topics and censored content at the direction of its China-based parent company.” Is it any wonder that Americans hold their elected and unelected officials in such low regard?

The DOJ’s attacks on TikTok help us understand why. It’s evidence that the DOJ isn’t serious, nor is the Congress that voted for a ban serious.

What neither the DOJ nor Congress can seem to grasp is that TikTok has owners who’ve created something so remarkable, and so surprisingly appealing to the most courted demographic in the world (the American consumer), that it soared from no presence in the U.S. to upwards of 170 million users. Is it any wonder that the owners want to closely manage their creation? Could Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat prosper while ignoring data about usage?

For the DOJ and Congress to presume otherwise is of a piece of the long-held left-wing view that businesses don’t prosper based on genius, but based on force and manipulation followed by sitting back and allowing said business to run itself. One presumes that just such a view informed the lockdowns foisted on us by our political class, and during which they said they needed us to take two weeks off from reality so that the virus would curl up and fall asleep. Except that with actual commerce, two weeks or even a day is an eternity.

Which explains why the DOJ’s accusations against TikTok are so childish. They’re rooted yet again in the presumption that head coaches don’t matter, that top players don’t matter (think Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, or Michael Jordan), and that by extension management doesn’t matter. In reality, absentee management fails always and everywhere simply because a failure to be constantly on watch as to what’s ahead, and what’s necessary to get ahead is the rapid path to obsolescence. Does anyone remember Circuit City, or Blockbuster, or News Corp.-owned MySpace?

Thinking about Facebook alone, it was not too long ago that its alleged “market power” was viewed as impregnable. “Everyone” was on Facebook, until they weren’t and until it became a site most often visited by demographics less courted by businesses.

As readers know, TikTok has loomed large in not just exposing Facebook’s inevitable vulnerability to market competition, but also as an instigator of Facebook’s necessary evolution in order to remain relevant for its users, along with its shareholders. Hello Meta as it aims to sleuth an opaque commercial future. Rather than attacking TikTok, Americans of all stripes (including in government) should be lionizing it for bringing the best out of those competing to meet our needs, while also discovering all new ways to lead our needs.

Instead, an entity attached to an administration intent on aggressively manipulating social media content to the detriment of our freedom and prosperity is attacking TikTok, a social media site most know for entertaining its users, and where entertainers come to entertain. Yet it’s somehow TikTok that’s the threat? Pardon 170 million users for perhaps thinking the DOJ’s “forceful case” is much less than serious.

Republished from RealClear Markets

Author

  • John Tamny

    John Tamny is a popular speaker and author in the U.S. and around the world. His speech topics include "Government Barriers to Economic Growth," "Why Washington and Wall Street are Better Off Living Apart," and more.

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