Due to the purported national security concerns posed by China-based ByteDance’s ownership of Tik Tok, the video sharing app which is used by around 170 million Americans and more than a billion people globally is in the spotlight. Congress is attempting to pass a law requiring that ByteDance divest itself of its interest in the company.

The ban would go into effect in six months.

“These countries have blocked or restricted it (Britain, EU, Canada, India, New Zealand, Afghanistan and Pakistan and note – primarily on government-issued devices),” the Washington Post reported. “The federal government already bans TikTok on government-owned devices.”

“U.S. critics of TikTok voice two main concerns. ByteDance was founded in Beijing, and one worry is that Chinese authorities could compel ByteDance to turn over data on American users that the government could use for purposes such as blackmail… The second concern is that Beijing could make TikTok tilt its algorithms to propagandize American users with messages and ideas that China’s government favors,” the Wall Street Journal wrote, adding that “Like other major social-media services, TikTok also is in the crosshairs of lawmakers, activists, parents and others over evidence that these platforms can have a harmful effect on users, particularly young people. TikTok’s algorithms have drawn criticism for inundating young people with videos about sensitive topics such as eating disorders.”

The problem is that the way the bill was written, the President can potentially use the ban against any company it deems a threat, which is tantamount to a full government takeover of one of our most important civil liberties – freedom of speech – and odd that the legislation to seemingly protect the US and by extension its citizens is introduced in an election year.

Gotta wonder…

As for manipulation, “Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook, revealed (in 2020) that it enables global political manipulation and has done little to stop it,” MIT Technology Review reported, “and was quiet when it came to its election misinformation efforts during the midterms, said NBC.

Even when whistleblower Frances Haugen gave testimony before Congress on Facebook’s manipulation of users’ emotions to the point where they were actually doing harm, nada was done to rein the company in.

To this day, even after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed Facebook’s misuse of data.

And lest we forget, Facebook was initially funded by In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA.

At this point, we’re all well aware of the surveillance and censorship baked into social media platforms, but are we aware of how far back it goes – or how truly baked in it actually is?  Here’s a must-see on YouTube: Tucker Carlson and Mike Benz reveals the main driver of censorship in the United States. Said Benz, former State Department head of Cyber portfolio, “Google began as a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grant and while at Stanford, Larry Page and Sergey Brin got their funding as part of a joint CIA/NSA grant to chart how ‘birds of a feather flock together’ online through search engine aggregation. One year later, they launched Google and became a military contractor. Quickly thereafter they got Google maps by purchasing CIA satellite software. Tracking free speech on the internet is a way to circumvent state control over media all over the world and they were able to do what used to be done out of a CIA station house that was totally turbocharged.

“All of the internet free speech technology was created by our national security state: VPN, tor and encrypted chat. All of these things were initially created as DARPA projects or joint CIA/NSA projects to help overthrow governments that were causing a problem to the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations.”

This is not about politics: it’s about potential government control of free speech and even freedom of information.

How dangerous is it to put the decision of what’s acceptable and what not in the hands of the President? Last week, President Biden signed an executive order that aimed to limit foreign governments’ access to bulk commercial data on Americans but did not address domestic government use of such data… U.S. intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies now rely on commercially available data from data brokers… This data includes detailed personal and movement information collected by businesses and sold to the government without a warrant… Some lawmakers propose restricting government access to commercial data without judicial oversight… Critics call for more transparency and regulation to protect individual privacy and civil liberties,” said Caden.

The Patriot Act was put into place after 9/11 to protect Americans – and not only created the greatest surveillance state on the planet: that surveillance is currently focused on the very citizens it was enacted to protect.

More often than not, whenever government regulations are enacted, it’s seldom in the best interests of the people. This may well be the latest attempt by the government to take control over one of our most important freedoms and considering government intrusion using US-grown technology, as Shakespeare put it, we wonder if the hour doth draw on apace. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Onward and forward. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Onward and forward.