Beijing doesn’t need the app to get information, and Google and Meta collect much more.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Kamala Harris regularly posted on TikTok, encouraging voters to follow her on the platform, as did Joe Biden before he withdrew. Yet the Biden Justice Department is set to argue before the Supreme Court this week that the popular Chinese-owned social-media app, used monthly by around 170 million Americans, represents a grave threat to our national security. Huh?
When Donald Trump tried to ban the app during his first presidency, a federal court blocked his executive order on the grounds that singling out the company was “arbitrary and capricious.” Mr. Trump also cited the nation’s safety, but lately he has become a huge fan of the app. “Why would I want to ban TikTok?” he wrote on Truth Social last week, above a bar graph that showed his TikTok views outpacing not only Ms. Harris’s but also those of Tucker Carlson and Taylor Swift.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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