TIKTOK AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Due to the recent headlines about TikTok I decided to check it out. Most of what I saw was exceedingly stupid, but otherwise fairly innocuous, so I’ve become more skeptical about the claims of politicians. It is one thing if it in fact is a vehicle to enable the CCP to spy on us, in which case it might then be a threat. They are also tracking and collecting personal information, but so are all the other platforms, and at present they may be having enough trouble keeping track of their own people to bother much with ours. Otherwise, I can’t imagine much use for a collection of dopey videos. There may or may not be something more there, but the only way to find out is to do some serious research instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

 The more salient concern is what negative impact it is having on vulnerable, impressionable young people. But that feature of social media is hardly unique to TikTok, so the Chinese element may be irrelevant, apart from sour grapes from Silicon Valley over the success they have had. Instagram, which began as a place to share photos, has been transformed into a clone of TikTok, with identical short, mindless videos, and there are others, so the phenomenon would persist even if there were no TikTok.

 

Throughout almost all of history there was no “gap” between generations. Even in modern times, the 1960s, and possibly the 1920s were aberrations. Thus, we have the phenomenon of younger people still connecting with music that is five or more decades old.

 

But now there is something that really is different and barely perceptible to most adults. These kids have grown up with an almost integral connection to social media. The rest of us grew up with a variety of experiences and venues such as movies, television, publications, as well as far more interaction with the physical world. For these kids everything, all of it, is online, especially social media, which has resulted in a very different perception of the world around us as well as what matters. If you’re not “there” you basically don’t exist. The paramount path to notoriety now is there, not in other media, which has generated a horde of aspiring “influencers,” as well as outsized significance provided to the insignificant. 

 

If it was simply a different perspective it wouldn’t matter so much, but with a growing realization of how much real harm is being done, it is very consequential, if not critical. 

 

Social media has become a vehicle for boundless narcissism, not just for kids but for adults as well. In this world everybody is a star (which can also effectively mean that nobody is). When someone puts up a video of themselves doing silly, or routine things like exercising, frequently lip-synching with a dreadful soundtrack, they do so in the hopes of gaining recognition, likes, followers, and other forms of positive feedback validating their lives. But what happens to the vulnerable when the feedback is negative? Clearly it can be devastating. 

 

Even adults are not immune to this sort of exposure to the extent that they can bristle at any negative reactions to what they post. Thus, what social media fundamentally gives us, to the extent that we allow it to, is naked, exposed egos. For the young, or those with fragile egos, the consequences can be  catastrophic.

 

Yet much here is not new. Even in the earliest years of the Internet there was negativity via “flame wars.” A quarter of a century ago AOL provided essentially the same material as Facebook but arguably better. Then there was MySpace, where everyone soon had a Page, but with the technology of the time pages rich with graphics and blasting music incessantly, they took forever to load, so the plain, simple interface of Facebook left them in the dust. But both heralded something new- the real you. 

 

Back on AOL virtually everyone had a handle, not many real names were used, personal information wasn’t exposed, and there were few photos. Thus, you really couldn’t know who was and wasn’t real, but at the same time you were reasonably safe. Here may lie the crux of the matter and possibly the easiest solution to the social media conundrum.

 

Banning a service or attempting to control it all is neither viable nor desirable, with the possible exception of platforms. But if people were limited in their personal exposure, many problems would dissipate. Furthermore, under current conditions privacy has been shredded. As long as personal information is out there, or worse even promoted, problems will persist. What we really need to do, for the protection of the public, is simply limit the exposure of personal information, especially on public venues. If this were to come about there would likely be a healthy loss of interest, once “me” or “I” were out of the picture. Life then might hopefully return to normal.  

THE FEDS BITE THE APPLE

When it comes to national security we are usually favorably disposed towards the government’s position and efforts, for that is its prime responsibility. However a federal court’s order to Apple to facilitate turning up evidence on a terrorism case is just plain wrong and an ominous expansion of government power. What is troubling is less about Apple’s resistance on principle and more to do with what the court has directed the company to pursue. 

It would be one thing if Apple had in its possession information that it was withholding or refusing to turn over. But Apple doesn’t have the information because their system does not allow even Apple to obtain user’s private information such as passwords, which is reassuring to customers concerned with their privacy. In other words, Apple itself does not have the keys to the box. What the court has done is breathtaking in its overreach. It has ordered Apple to do something to get the information, to come up with a way to crack the system which is designed to be nearly impossible to break. It is demanding that Apple come up with a way to defeat its own safeguards which hitherto have not been breached. 

There is no certainty that this is even possible. But if it is many arguments have been put forward as to why the order should be resisted. First it would destroy the promise of security that customers expect, second it effectively enable the government to penetrate the privacy of anyone at any time, third if a “back door” into the system is found hackers will soon get access, and fourth, since Apple sells more phones internationally than in the US, other governments, many with less respect for human rights than others, will demand the same prerogative. 

But most importantly and most troubling is the state’s order that Apple create something that does not exist now. If the government can tell Apple that you must do X because we need Y then the it effectively empowers the state to do the same with any entity or person at any time. For once it is established that the government can compel anyone to take certain actions they have not done before, with this effort coming at their own expense, there is no limit to what it could demand. If the FBI wants this information they should find a way themselves, for this is not something relatively benign like metadata, but is instead a serious abuse of power.  

No sane person has any sympathy with terrorists, who must be rigorously pursued by any necessary means. If Apple had the requested information it would be right to order that they turn it over. But they don’t. It is completely unreasonable to force them to go find something they do not possess and that they might or might not be able to discover. The government has more than enough evidence to make this particular case (the massacre of 14 people in San Bernadino). The only possible value for what it is asking is to find out if anyone else is involved, which is a laudable goal, but can be discovered in other ways. 

If this goes forward we will not be any safer or more secure, and we will have lost a significant amount of freedom. So it is not even privacy that we ought to be concerned about so much as the ridiculous notion that the government in seeking information no one possesses can force any of us to go find it for them. All lovers of freedom should support Apple in this matter. 

PRIVACY AND GOVERNMENT POWER

Privacy is a relatively new concept in human affairs. For most of our existence there was no such thing. Cave people huddled together, and up through the 19th century, with typically large families, space was shared. Everyone pretty much knew what everyone else was doing. The constitution makes no direct mention of privacy, and in fact it is a “right” invented by the Supreme Court by inference only a few decades ago. This is in keeping with sweeping increase in the rights of individuals across the board in modern times. Most people instinctively feel that privacy is a good thing, and something that ought to be protected, and recent federal incursions are indeed troubling. 

If the security agencies of the government are keeping track of phone calls, in terms of their connections, (not their content, which still requires the approval of a federal judge) in order to snag terrorists, the question arises whether it is or is not a bad thing. People will generally allow the government wide latitude when it comes to safety and security, as long as the actions it takes are reasonable, and in keeping with a particular purpose. But then there is the RICO problem. RICO is a statute that was originally designed to target racketeering by gangsters, by catching them in a criminal conspiracy, which became a crime in and of itself. However, it has been used more broadly to attack other things. Congress frequently passes laws that are designed for one thing, that in the hands of the bureaucracy charged with carrying them out becomes something else. Thus, the question arises whether actions authorized to snare terrorists, can then be used to pursue something else, totally unrelated. For once the power is granted it can easily be abused. 

We are seeing an extraordinary abuse of power by this administration, in one scandal after another, including attacks on the press and individuals and groups they disagree with. This did not have to happen, but since the administration chose to place left-wing ideologues in sensitive positions, it is unsurprising that these zealots would use all the tools at their disposal to get the “enemy.” These are people who see big government as good, and a powerful state as a force to achieve their objectives. But what we are learning is that if people can overreach, they will overreach. So the question arises whether the authority we have given the government to pursue terrorists, a perceived good, is offset by its potential or real application towards something totally unrelated, an evil. Thus, the authority to sift telephone information for terrorist activity could easily be applied to your political or financial activity. 

It gets worse, because private institutions are also in on the game. The executives of Google and Yahoo, for example, are strong supporters of the administration, which indicates there is a seamless continuum of power, here involving the collection of information on anything you do online. Given all of this, at the present time privacy may be something of an illusion. But people have brought this on themselves by posting all sorts of personal information online, or talking (annoyingly) on a cell phone and spilling out more about their personal lives than anyone wants to know. Under the present circumstances the wise thing to do is assume that someone somewhere is watching what you do, or is able to track and retrieve that information if they want to. 

But there is also the argument that in effect says “so what.” If you have nothing to hide, and are not up to no good, why should you care? This is one way to keep everyone honest. But this is predicated on the assumption that the government itself cannot do wrong. That is a dubious proposition in light of current events. Our Founders understood that human beings are fallible, and provided us with a constitution that limited the power of government, but over time this has gradually been eroded either by unconstrained bureaucrats, an unelected judiciary, a power hungry administration, or an inept congress that passes laws that are so broadly worded that bureaucrats or judges interpret them any way they want to. 

What is to be done? Clearly congress has to be far more explicit in legislation so unaccountable individuals don’t get blanket authority to do what fancies them. It may not be possible to anticipate every instance of abuse, but recognizing its potential likelihood would help, as would assuming people may do bad as well as good. We must remain steadfast in our opposition to terrorism, but any extraordinary powers granted to government must be very narrowly focused, and explicitly restricted to the intended purpose. Otherwise we should seek to devolve power from the federal government, and limit what it can and cannot do, in keeping with our founding philosophy.  For the only way to avoid the abuse of power is to limit the power of government.