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Last week, the US House of Representatives passed what many call a TikTok ban bill. Now, many representatives that voted for this bill will say that it’s not actually a ban. It’s actually stating that app stores won’t be able to include apps owned by “foreign adversaries.” So, if ByteDance, which is the Chinese parent company of TikTok, just sells it’s billion-dollar company to another company that isn’t headquartered in a country deemed as a foreign adversary by the US, then it’ll be just fine.
It just needs to do this in six months.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Of course, never mind the fact that it makes no sense for ByteDance to sell its hugely successful app. And even if it wanted to, trying to sell this multi-billion-dollar company to the few buyers who could actually afford it in six months sounds impossible.
It’s an election year. I’m not holding out too many hopes that this nonsense won’t pass given that Biden has said that he will sign the bill if it comes to his desk. I say that it’s nonsense because having the government dictate what kind of apps I can have on my phone feels alien and kind of scary to me.
On the other hand, not having the app on my phone will surely help with my phone addiction problems. Still, without the app, there are few silly things that I would surely miss, like:
Strange conspiracy theories about the missing Kate Middleton involving Photoshop and body doubles.
Nonstop cringe videos mocking poor (well, actually filthy rich) JLo and her strange vanity project movie-plus-documentary.
The monstrosity that is the chocolate chip cookie and croissant mashup.
All kidding aside, I was feeling a hole for staying on trend and keeping up to date with the news when Twitter went down the Elon Musk cesspool slide. TikTok filled that gap quite nicely. Even though its algorithm isn’t quite chronological, it did manage to serve up timely videos that kept me in the know politically, musically, and just generally.
Here are a few things that I will really miss if TikTok is actually banned in the US.
Unfiltered reports from the left about abortion and healthcare rights being taken away. Most mainstream media outlets are going to both-sides a lot of political issues. TikTok allowed me to see actual people speak about the real-life impacts the passage of some of the most draconian laws had on them.
Non-mainstream info about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. There is a lot of propaganda floating around there, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. But there is still a lot more info from both sides that you can get on TikTok then you will get on any of our mainstream outlets.
Joyful recipes, art, books, movies, and music. I will most definitely miss the pure joy of coming across artists creating art, non-megastars singing and playing instruments, home cooks sharing recipes. Regular folks sharing their movie and book recommendations have allowed me to discover music and media that I would never have heard of otherwise.
I don’t know what will happen to TikTok. And I have already started to limit the amount of time I’ve spent on the app. I’ve tried YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels, but neither app has an algorithm that has quite figured me out yet. We’ll see what the future holds. There always seems to be some new app that fills the void when one gets pushed out.
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