Please don’t make me use Instagram Reels.
I begrudgingly downloaded TikTok in the summer of 2019 after months of internal debate over whether or not it would be a waste of time. It definitely was, but after years of watching videos that were dumb, there are some genuinely hilarious ones that have become cult classics in my head.
I’m confident that consuming so many hours of public internet content was good for valuable entertainment and laughs. It has become a subconscious daily routine of mine that quickly fills the gaps when I’m bored without anything to do.
Beyond my personal scope of using TikTok, the app has acted as a vessel for public outreach for many creators and small businesses. Businesses and creators that never existed before now can have booming personal brands built around their namesake.
When lawmakers talk about banning the app, they are forgetting about the new businesses and people that would have their efforts completely erased. TikTok has changed their lives, according to a March 31 article published by NBC San Diego.
It's become a community building tool, as young people now congregate together to make and enjoy videos. Within the nonsense, it fills a Vine-shaped-hole in some of our hearts.
Instagram Reels is a scrollable, short-form media source that was definitely built off of TikTok’s successes, and that doesn’t mean it's not its own viable avenue for a similar experience. I’ve just never been a fan of the design layout of these videos compared to TikTok. A lot of the content is recycled and reposted TikTok videos I’ve already seen a while ago.
But the problem doesn’t really lie there. There’s a much more sinister idea at play by actors in the political arena when the conversation shifts to banning it.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress on March 23 to defend his company’s ability to keep American content and user data safe and confidential, according to a March 24 Reuters article. Given the current tension about diplomatic relations between China and the United States, some lawmakers saw this as an opportunity to paint xenophobic blue and white paint onto China’s red canvas.
The app is one of the first prominent social media platforms, in my eyes, to have public ties to China, as its parent company is a Chinese internet company named ByteDance. This was weaponized as a point of contention by conservatives who wish to make China out as the United States’ twenty-first century threat.
Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, insinuated Chew was working with Chinese intelligence, which is when Chew responded telling him he was Singaporean, according to a March 26 article by Salon. This vast generalization made by Crenshaw, and people like him who don’t show respect to finding out where an Asian person is from, fuel a far-right, hate-mongering machine against Asian people in general.
This is the same party whose top member used the coronavirus pandemic against Asians. President Trump was boasting at his rallies about the “kung flu” and tweeting about the “chinese virus.”
Research conducted by University of California San Francisco showed that Trump’s rhetoric in naming it the “chinese virus” online was linked to a rise in the usage of anti-Asian hashtags on Twitter, according to a March 18, 2021 article.
Hateful words used by politicians are dog whistles that call out to masses of people who now feel empowered to see others sharing in their ill thinking. The disrespect shown by Republican members of Congress only reinforce their thoughts.
Republicans seemingly want an enemy, and some of them want it to be China. Xenophobia and racism is used as common ground for their supporters, so pinning a needle into a country and its people works great as soulless political ammunition.
A ban on the app would weaken the millions of Gen Z TikTok users who have the conscious ability to organize and grow intellectually, outside of the hateful rhetoric slung around in politics. Any young adult can use the app to view thousands of videos with anti-capitalist or anti-racist sentiments, which is exactly what a political opponent would not want you to see.
TikTok creates community for both sides of the political spectrum, so regardless of who you vote for, it’s a net loss for everyone’s conversation and free speech. Everyone needs to take everything they view on TikTok with a grain of salt because of misinformation. It is the internet after all. As long as you fact check claims made by creators with Google and view what someone is calling news without naivety, any user is pretty safe.
TikTok is not perfect, and the privacy of its users’ data should always be talked about and improved upon. A ban of the app in its entirety however, for all of its 150 million American users, is nothing short of ill-willed lawmakers playing political games that use people as pawns.
