Don't Do TikTok

Just Say No.

(The Bulwark / Midjourney)

1. CCP LOL

TikTok is the future of social media. Not the permanent future, but the near future. And I feel guilty not getting onto TikTok, because it’s a very big deal, a lot of people are there, and in my business you have to go where the people are.

But I keep resisting it because TikTok is genuinely dangerous.

The small-bore concern is personal data. TikTok is basically Chinese spyware. The platform is owned by a Chinese company, Bytedance, which, like all Chinese companies, operates at the pleasure of the Chinese Communist Party.¹ Anyone from Bytedance who wants to look into an American user’s TikTok data can do so. And they do it on the reg.

Maybe you’re blasé about your personal data. After the OPM hack you figure that Xi Jinping already knows your Social Security number and your mother’s maiden name. If the ChiComs don’t have your data now, they will eventually. You might as well get some mind-numbing idiocy out of the deal.

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But personal data isn’t the big danger. The big danger is that TikTok decides