Opinion With looming TikTok ban in the US, the death of the global internet

I remember the world before Google, where the only way to find credible information online was through a p2p network of carefully maintained links to discussion forums which were not just digital dumpster fires. There was a time before Facebook where we had just discovered blogging and were finding communities that were experimenting with user generated content. Before Twitter, there were enough spaces on the internet which were fuelled by rage and hate. We didn’t have to wait for Instagram to go and get ourselves bullied, negged, and sexualised — there were enough spaces for whoever wanted it, where the most vulnerable people were constantly being violated and attacked.

Our social media practices are so overwhelming and encompassing that we forget how new and temporary they are. Many of the legacy apps have already wrapped up. The more persistent ones have evolved so much that they bear almost no resemblance to their original versions. The breathless air of innovation and disruption and the desperate search for something new constantly bombard us with the next big thing which is going to make everything else obsolete. Once the hype dies, the initial curiosity falters and most of these disruptors find their space in the digital ecosystem, with things more or less scrolling along.

If there is one unwritten rule of the internet that is rooted in information and attention economies, it is that this too shall pass. Apps will come and go, with digital life cycles that are more akin to that of fruit flies than tortoises. Given the ephemeral nature of these apps, it does come as a surprise that so many governments around the world keep on trying to control one which has recently been on an upswing — TikTok. In India, we have already mourned the death of TikTok, and a slew of old and new apps have evolved to replace it, grabbing the mindless, repetitive, memetics-driven interactive video-platforming space that TikTok ushered in.

The Indian users, devastated when the app first got banned, along with the hyperbolic analysts and speculators who warned us that it was the beginning of the end, have all survived the great loss. As the United States government now considers the banning of TikTok, the questions have come to the fore again — what is it about TikTok that seems to trouble so many people so profoundly? The usual arguments about the brokenness of the internet — misinformation, manipulative algorithms, immersive frivolous content that shapes political decisions, rampant hate and violence, radicalisation of young people on ideological grounds, exploitation of users by selling their data, targeted messaging that makes people vulnerable through AI analytics, and polarisation of societies intensified by filter bubbles – do not work. This is because TikTok doesn’t have a monopoly or uniqueness on any of these. If these are the reasons why TikTok has to be banned, we might as well shut down the internet, wear tinfoil hats and wait for the rapture.

There is nothing exceptional about TikTok and its policies around content curation, data brokerage and ownership, and the promotion of attention-filling scrolls that keep people dissociated from their real life and its challenges. If anything, the accelerated success of TikTok has pushed almost all of the other social media platforms to naturalise these practices, and dollars to donuts, there is very little to choose between any of them.

What then, can we say about the attacks, bans, and demonisation of TikTok beyond the obvious geopolitics of its origins in China? Is there something more to be discussed if we accept that while the internet might seem to be a post-sovereign technology, the bordered nationalities continue to replay and reshape the digital in significant ways? The one thing that the global discourse on TikTok has to offer is perhaps the changing relationship between nations and digital platforms.

For the longest time, especially driven by the neo-liberal economic rhetoric, technological platforms were presented to us as independent market entities which negotiate with different governments and authorities in their localisation. What TikTok signals for us is that the platforms are not just something that governments regulate. They are ways by which governments are platformed. The extraordinarily expansive nature of digital platforms makes them more than just mediums or tools. They are, in fact, ways by which governments are being shaped and consumed on a global scale.

The regulation of TikTok might be geopolitical, but it is not because it came from China and is Chinese. It’s because TikTok is China, and it has become impossible to extricate government agenda, policies, and practices from the intentions and spread of these digital platforms. Whether TikTok meets its untimely death or not, this should become a milestone where we accept that the global moment of the internet is over, and our digital platforms are now going to be treated not as media but as stand-ins for the governments and territories of their origin.

The writer is professor of Global Media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University, USA