The Hon Debbie Ngarewa-Packer MP was right when she questioned our government’s decision to ban Tiktok from parliamentary devices.
If it’s about foreigners getting hold of data, then why not ban Facebook and Instagram?
Last I looked, Tiktok had not, unlike Facebook, been party to any genocides.
Parliamentary Services says at least Meta is American and operates in line with our values. So being party to genocide is in line with our values? So information leaking to the likes of Cambridge Analytica—and its effects on democracy—are in line with our values?
It’s all about hopping on an occidental bandwagon over unproven claims that Tiktok hands stuff over to the PRC.
And if it is proven, then let us see the proof.
Let’s say our government doesn’t have the proof but it’s using Edward Snowden’s revelations about the US as a proxy of how data from social media companies wind up with their governments. That’s actually a fair point and we should expect that it’s probably happening. We can make a pretty reasoned guess that it is.
In that case, it’s all the more reason we should consider banning the lot of them, not just Tiktok. Keep our data in our country.
Remember, we’re not banning any of these platforms from private citizens, just what can be used by our Parliament. If it’s about private citizens, I’d be advising that we take out known disinformation ones, which are often funded or manipulated by shady overseas backers or even nation states. They’re literally placing New Zealanders in harm’s way. That would mean a pretty wide net, too, and I imagine no one in power would want to wield that responsibility. Or that the penny will drop, as it usually does, 10 years too late. (Hello, readers of 2033!)
Literally as I was completing the title and meta (small m) description fields for this, this Mastodon post from an ethics’ professor appeared.
In case it ever disappears, she writes:
As your resident TikTok micro-celebrity + tech ethics/policy professor, I have a lot of feelings about the proposed TikTok ban. I think that this statement from Evan Greer of Fight for the Future articulates some points well. If the sole argument is “but China” I would very much like to see something beyond speculation. And if it’s just not that, then go after Meta too. And either way maybe you could pass LITERALLY ANY DATA PRIVACY LAWS.
The image is from the Fight for the Future website, and the text reads:
“If it weren’t so alarming, it would be hilarious that US policymakers are trying to ‘be tough on China’ by acting exactly like the Chinese government. Banning an entire app used by millions of people, especially young people, LGBTQ folks, and people of color, is classic state-backed Internet censorship,” said Evan Greer (she/her), director of Fight for the Future. “TikTok uses the exact same surveillance capitalist business model of services like YouTube and Instagram. Yes, it’s concerning that the Chinese government could abuse data that TikTok collects. But even if TikTok were banned, they could access much of the same data simply by purchasing it from data brokers, because there are almost no laws in place to prevent that kind of abuse. If policymakers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for strong data privacy laws that prevent all companies (including TikTok!) from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone.”
You may also like
