The history of the global Internet is the history of local applications striving to grow and realize the promise of global connectivity. Our current plethora of digital applications are built on the graveyard of a host of once-popular platforms, applications, environments, products, and tools.
I remember a pre-Google world where the only way to find reliable information online was through a p2p network of carefully maintained forum links, not just digital dumpster fires. There was a time before Facebook, when we were just discovering blogging and were looking for communities that were experimenting with user-generated content. Before Twitter, there was plenty of space on the internet fueled by anger and hate. We don’t have to wait until Instagram comes along to subject ourselves to bullying, negation and sexualization – there’s plenty of space for anyone who wants it, while the most vulnerable are constantly violated and attacked.
Our social media practices are so overwhelming and all-encompassing that we forget how novel and ephemeral they are. Many legacy applications have been completed. The more durable versions have evolved so much that they bear almost no resemblance to the original versions. The suffocating air of innovation and disruption and the desperate pursuit of the new constantly bombards us with the next big thing that will make everything else obsolete. Once the hype subsides, the initial curiosity falters, most disruptors find their space in the digital ecosystem, and things more or less continue to evolve.
If there’s one unwritten rule of the internet rooted in the information and attention economy, it’s that this too shall pass. Applications will come and go, and the digital life cycle is more akin to a fruit fly than a turtle. Considering the ephemeral nature of these applications, it is indeed surprising that so many governments around the world continue to try to control TikTok, which has been on the rise recently. In India, we have mourned the death of TikTok and a host of old and new apps have grown up to replace it, grabbing the mindless, repetitive, meme-driven, interactive video platform space that TikTok brought to the table.
When the app was first banned, Indian users experienced huge losses as did the hyperbolic analysts and speculators who warned us this was the beginning of the end. As the U.S. government now considers banning TikTok, the question has resurfaced—what is it about TikTok that troubles so many people so deeply? Common arguments about the collapse of the internet – misinformation, manipulative algorithms, immersive boring content influencing political decisions, rampant hate and violence, ideological-based radicalization of young people, exploiting users by selling data, making people Fragile targeted messaging via AI analysis, and social polarization exacerbated by filter bubbles – doesn’t work. This is because TikTok is not a monopoly or unique in any of these areas. If these are the reasons why TikTok must be banned, we might as well turn off the internet, put on our tinfoil hats, and wait for the ecstasy.
There’s nothing special about TikTok, its policies around content moderation, data brokerage and ownership, and its promotion of attention-grabbing scroll bars that distract people from real life and its challenges. If anything, TikTok’s accelerating success has pushed nearly every other social media platform to naturalize these practices, leaving little to choose between dollars and donuts.
So what can we say about the attacks, bans and demonization of TikTok, beyond the obvious geopolitical origins of TikTok in China? What if we accept that while the Internet may appear to be a post-sovereign technology, border peoples continue to reenact and reshape digital technologies in significant ways? Perhaps one thing the global discussion about TikTok has to offer is the changing relationship between states and digital platforms.
For a long time, especially driven by neoliberal economic rhetoric, technology platforms have been presented to us as independent market entities, negotiating their localization with different governments and authorities. TikTok is signaling to us that these platforms are more than just something for governments to regulate. They are ways to de-platform government. The extremely broad nature of digital platforms makes them more than just mediums or tools. In fact, they are the way governments shape and consume them around the world.
Regulation of TikTok may be geopolitical, but it’s not because it comes from and is Chinese. Because TikTok is Chinese, it is no longer possible for the government’s agenda, policies, and practices to be divorced from the intentions and dissemination of these digital platforms. Regardless of whether TikTok meets its untimely demise, this should serve as a milestone for us to acknowledge that the global era of the internet is over and that our digital platforms will now be viewed not as media but as stand-ins for governments and regions. the origin.
(The author is Professor of Global Media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Associate Professor at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University)