The Americans want to save us from China. Yes, the almighty America believes that China is dangling a hypnotic candy bar that might attract a substantial chunk of the universe to its communistic ways. Communism is considered one of the closest societies in the world. If you patronise allied media, it is supposed to be one of the most backward systems of governance. It could not have given birth to an Andrew Weinreich, said to be the father of social media. Unfortunately, China and communism appear to be leading the pack when it comes to social media. While closing its own society to the evil effects of uncontrolled information, Chinese citizens are playing in the big league of social media ownership.
How did this coup take place without America knowing? If China, the Chinese and the communist party were satisfied with its control of manufacturing most of the gadgets used in America and the rest of the world, America could have turned the other eye. But communism is greedy, wanting in on data mining or the control of hearts and minds of an uncomfortable chunk of the human race.
Since opening up; China has jumped into mining the mineral resources of countries that only capitalism, the godfather of democracy had unimpeded access; such as in Africa. Wanting in on the mining of our personal data that until now is exclusively stored on servers in Langley is totally unacceptable. Hence the need to protect democracy’s disciples from communism’s clear, present and imminent danger.
While the world’s most influential social media platforms are under the control of Americans, China has one that America particularly wants to bring in like the rich man in the scriptures who left his herd and slaughtered the lone sheep of his poor neighbour to entertain his guest.
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America believes that TikTok, with its one billion active users and the fourth largest player in the field after behemoths of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram might owe its loyalty to the Chinese politburo. With just 21 per cent of five billion global internet users, America believes this is too large a niche to be left in the hands of rampaging communists. About 170 million Americans interact with TikTok daily.
Opposition to this danger is the only thing that once united Joe Biden and his archenemy Donald Trump. That is how serious the threat was until lately when Trump appeared to be singing a different tune on the TikTok ban. Even as the first American president to romance communists, Trump initiated the idea of TikTok divesting its shares to Americans or risk a complete ban. Biden’s Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is towing the same path.
Trump’s change of mind might not have been unconnected with the fact that he was eyeing the social media pie. His company, Trump Media and Technology Group, TMTG just clinched a deal that raised its shares to $500 million, enough to pay court-imposed fines on the embattled ex-president. While business analysts swear, he could not hawk his shares as collateral for judgement debt, Trump’s company is now worth enough on paper to appeal to private lenders. In American politics and its mercurial business climate, Trump could spin a surprise. After all, very few of my readers have heard of Truth Social, Trump’s alternate social media platform that spurned this deal from the blues. Literally fighting a battle for his political life, Trump needs all the allies he could get.
American animosity against TikTok has had global ripple effects on the social media platform, from the ban on the installation of the app on all government-issued devices, countries as close as Canada and as far as France and Australia have copied the ban. On March 14, Italian authorities fined TikTok owners 10 million Euros for failing to ‘sufficiently protect minors.’
It all looks like rain on an upturned gourd to TikTok. Rather than reduce in impact, the social media platform is inching closer to the third position in global rankings. Judging by how America has defended global democratic interests in the rest of the globe, only fools would not support this move against communist China.
Users of American-owned social media platforms know that mining user’s personal data is legit. Google is so audacious in its mining of our lives that it tells our wives where we went after work and the favourite person on our call and text log. Every weekend, Google reminds users how many kilometers they’ve covered even without using its Maps. It goes a step further by asking users to write reviews of commercial enterprises where they shop. Of course, Google would never share this information with the FBI or the CIA except on the orders of an American court. We have America to thank for the contracts in fine print.
Where would the world be without America as a beacon for democracy? The answer could be found in how it liberated Libya from the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. Today, Libya has two governments. In Iraq, America’s freedom convoy liberated the people from the hegemony of Sadam Hussein and the Baath Party on the blood of 110,000 people, 60,000 of whom were civilians.
Like Iraq, the Syrians have lost the vestiges of ancient civilization and their trust in Bashar al-Assad with six million citizens scrounging as refugees. Within the American neighbourhood, the seed of ‘democracy’ has been planted in Panama, Hawaii, Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras and as far afield as Haiti. Victims of these America’s democracy brigades have lately found that not only Trump wants them out of the liberator’s refuge, but even Biden is against the ‘invasion’ of America by refugees and asylum seekers.
Social media is a new frontier in the battle for hearts and minds. A social media platform like TikTok could threaten American popularity, hence the need to curtail communism’s advance on emergent and stagnant nations like those in Africa and the Far East. TikTok is number two in popularity in many African nations. Young entrepreneurs, artists and influencers leverage the platform to reach their publics. It is a prevailing danger to the dominance of American pop culture.
This is why it is very dangerous to let the communists get a hooking share on the mining of our data. As we have seen with America’s unrelenting campaign to bring Julian Assange to justice for exposing the secrets that democracy would like to hide, even democracy realises that a platform that peddles alternate facts is a danger to the prevailing social order.
For instance, how would Nigerians start asking what 17 officers and men of their army were doing in the Delta if established social media did not provide the platform? Imagine the damage communist control of social media could have done to the Iraqi invasion in an era of embedded truths from the frontline. Left to democracy’s media allies, Israel would have carried out its annihilation of Palestinians without question. Not even journalists are spared in its war as about 100 have so far lost their lives in the line of duty. Whoever controls data mining controls our minds. This is why America wants Zhang Yiming’s ByteDance company to forcefully divest its shares to those with the sole democratic rights to control how we live, what we eat, where we go and with whom we mingle? America has the sole right to Orwell’s 1984.
