Imagine a world where America’s foreign adversaries don’t need spies or hackers to infiltrate our society or meddle with our democracy. Instead, they can deploy a far more insidious tool: a digital platform, addictive by design, that captivates its users and then mobilizes them to influence our democratic institutions.
The scenario may sound farfetched, but something like that recently happened. Earlier this month, while the US Congress was considering a bill that would curtail TikTok’s operations in the United States, the popular, Chinese-owned social media platform confronted its users with a kind of digital ransom note calling for political action. As the New York Times reported, TikTok’s campaign sparked a deluge of calls to Capitol Hill, overwhelming some congressional offices and demonstrating the platform’s political influence.
TikTok, whose parent company is the Beijing-based ByteDance, is alarmingly addictive and has a young and intensely loyal user base. It’s so addictive, in fact, that the Chinese version of the app, Douyin, limits Chinese users under the age of 14 to 40 minutes of usage a day, and only between the hours of 6am and 10pm. TikTok introduced a similar measure in the US last year, restricting users under 18 to a default limit of 60 minutes a day, though the feature is optional; certain high-usage users are asked to accept a limit, according to ABC News, but are allowed to decide their own maximum.
TikTok’s recommender algorithm, which barrages users with an endless feed of viral, short-form video clips, has effectively exploited human psychology to ensnare a generation of users. Research, including studies funded by China’s own National Natural Science Foundation, have shown that the app undermines human self-control and encourages compulsive consumption. Its algorithms. which automatically curate content to users’ tastes and preferences, have perfected what many other companies have tried: fostering addiction through a feedback loop that continually refines content suggestions based on user interactions and profiling.
Researchers have suggested that excessive TikTok usage among young people correlates to mental health problems and poor academic performance that further drives depression. With nearly one in five teens reporting that they’re on YouTube or TikTok “almost constantly”, the draw to the platform seems less like a choice and more like a compulsion.
The FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent testimony to the Senate intelligence committee also underscored the national security risks posed by the Chinese government’s control of software on millions of American devices. Those risks, as well as TikTok’s generally addictive nature, are part of what led to growing momentum for a US legislative response.
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would compel ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a US company or face a ban on distribution through major platforms and app stores. President Joe Biden has expressed support for the bill, which enjoys strong bipartisan backing, and indicated he is ready to sign it into law after it is passed by the Senate.
By contrast, Donald Trump, whose administration sought to ban TikTok due to the risk of Chinese government surveillance, has reversed his stance in what seems like a strategically motivated pivot to court younger voters and perhaps China. Trump’s opposition to the bill should raise an alarm bell about the risks of TikTok being weaponized in the forthcoming election.
Don’t underestimate the platform’s influence: with one-third of American adults under 30 regularly scrolling TikTok for news, and the app serving as the predominant source of information for generation Z, the platform could well influence the presidential election this fall and other US elections to come.
While Congress’s bill aims to address immediate security concerns by compelling ByteDance’s divestiture, it falls short of addressing TikTok’s broader risks to US democracy. If the bill takes effect, the app would still probably remain on many of the 170m US devices that have already downloaded it, exposing its users to digital manipulation and foreign data aggregation and influence. The app’s gradual dysfunction when it can no longer be updated might render it slow, glitchy and eventually unusable, but this may not happen before the November elections.
Beyond a single app, this saga demands a broader conversation about safeguarding democracy in the digital age. The European Union’s newly enacted AI act provides a blueprint for a more holistic approach, using an evidence- and risk-based system that could be used to classify platforms like TikTok as high-risk AI systems subject to more stringent regulatory oversight, with measures that demand transparency, accountability and defensive measures against misuse.
As the bill heads to the Senate, it will almost certainly face an onslaught of legal and lobbying efforts. Critics will also probably argue that the threats TikTok poses are overblown or that the US Congress is merely engaged in anti-China political posturing. That’s untrue. If anything, this is an opportunity for Congress to refine its approach to social media and other powerful technology platforms and adopt a nuanced, risk-based framework that would balance the creative freedoms of content creators with the imperative to shield the public from foreign manipulation.
This – the TikTok dilemma – calls for a decisive, comprehensive strategy to fortify the pillars of our democracy and protect Americans’ cognitive liberty – the individual and collective right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. We can and should chart a course toward a future where technology is better aligned with the greater good.
Nita Farahany is the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology and the Robinson O Everett professor of law and philosophy at Duke University
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
