Can't Anyone Here Play This Game? Dems and TikTok's Sale

It looks as if TikTok is going to be sold to a collection of right-wing billionaires. This now means that its algorithm will likely change to promote far-right wing content, as Twitter’s did (if Musk gets to deadname his kid, I get to deadname his website). This is both bad and was completely predictable the moment the Dems helped force a sale. It is political malpractice of the highest order, and a decent proxy for why the Democrats as a group are doing so poorly resisting the authoritarian take over.

The only people with money enough to buy TikTok and with the desire to do so are tech oligarchs. These people have been becoming more and more right wing, and more and more authoritarian, in their outlook since at least the Pandemic. Many of them have gone down a rabbit hole where any criticism of their goals or action is seen as completely outside the bounds of allowed activity. They have, in large part, gone nuts. Forcing a sale of TikTok was almost always going to end up with it in the hands of one of these people.

And the owners are almost certainly going to push right-wing viewpoints. Such viewpoints have been given point of pride at Facebook and Twitter and Bezos has pushed a more right-wing view on the Washington Post. Paramount has bribed trump to allow its merger with Skydance via money and putting a Trump loyalist as watchdog over the news division. These people give every appearance of using their power to privilege their preferred ideology. Handing them TikTok will only accelerate that.

Democrats could have seen this coming — should have seen this coming. It is not a surprise that tech barons are right wing, not in this day and age. It is not a surprise that forcing a sale would lead to the most popular algorithmic social media being turned over to the right wing. Even if you were worried about foreign government propaganda — and I think that most of that worry stemmed from the fact that TikTok was one place that was not anti-Palestinian during the Gaza invasion — the proper response is not to hand over the world’s most popular social media firm to far right-wing zealots. The proper response would have been to attack the algorithm. Bad selling data. Ban personalized advertisement. require a chronological feed and insist that it be the default. Attack the system that underpins the problem that is social media. That would have been effective.

Unfortunately, our Democratic leadership is not effective, at least around tech. Most are too old to understand how it works at a systematic level. Many of the ones that do come from technological centers are very often beholden to tech money. And we have far, far too many Democratic leaders that refuse to understand either power or the need for little-d democratic control of the economy. Companies cannot be free to abuse their power or their users. It is the obligation of the government to step in when it does, and the entire social media industry is based on manipulating users and ramping up conflict for engagement.

Maybe my solutions are not the best, or won’t work, or are otherwise inappropriate. Fine. But the Democrats need to stop reacting and start thinking. We live in a world of systems, and the Democrats need to think about how to ensure those systems advance democracy rather than oppose it. Otherwise, we will keep blundering into avoidable disasters.