Given all we know now about how U.S. intelligence agencies conspire with Big Tech firms and nongovernmental cutouts to spy on and manipulate U.S. citizens, together with what the Twitter Files revealed last year about how the FBI and DHS deputized social media companies to censor Americans and throttle free speech, you’d think lawmakers who ostensibly care about the First Amendment would balk at expanding the online censorship industry’s reach in the United States.
But you’d be wrong. Last week in Washington there was a sudden concentrated push among House Republicans and Democrats alike to pass a so-called “TikTok ban.” The bill, which sailed out of committee and was passed with bipartisan support in the House, now goes to the Senate, where it will likely meet the same bipartisan approval.
It’s not really a ban, though. The bill would give TikTok, which is owned by its Chinese Communist Party-controlled parent company, ByteDance, the option to sell the app’s U.S. operations or be banned. Because the CCP uses TikTok to spy on U.S. users, the bill seems at first glance like a good idea. President Trump tried to ban the app in 2020 via executive order but was blocked by federal courts.
But there’s something else going on here. Namely, the push to “ban” TikTok is a thinly veiled scheme to force ByteDance to sell to a U.S. company. The purpose of forcing a sale should be obvious. If a U.S. firm owns TikTok, the federal censorship industrial complex can use the platform as
