The Pop Corporation

The music industry is sparring with TikTok and the whole thing has the vague whiff of when the music industry had a massive brawl with Napster. Now, of course, the scrap with Napster somehow ended up with Spotify, which isn’t exactly a result for people who make music, but consumers are happy enough. TikTok, for the consumer, is great – and again, for musicians, not so much outside of some promo, which the digital world is basically seen as both the platform AND the promo.

Well, either way, the US government are going after the social platform because mutter mutter something China something something. Obviously, the USA tends to side with big business like most Western governments do, and Joe Biden is going to sign a bill that’s trundling its way through Congress, and it looks like it’ll basically ban the app over there.

Way to win the youth vote. Why don’t you continue with a hugely unpopular war and go after vapes while you’re at it? Ah.

The rub does seem to be a ‘national security’ concern, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the assorted media that the bill is “important,” and those at the White House “welcome this step.” The US government workers are already not allowed to have TikTok on their devices, because clearly, those sneaky Chinese spies are wading through everyone’s dance routines to harvest all that lovely American data and probably build missiles out of it or something.

Of course, we should point out that Biden joined TikTok last month in a bid to reach young voters with his ‘BidenHQ’ account. Can’t wait to see him lip syncing to some niche anime show or doing one of those pretend boyfriend routines where he cries or whatever.

The press sec is at pains to point out that the White House sees the bill as ensuring that TikTok’s owners isn’t “in the hands of those who may do us harm,” and doesn’t this all feel a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted? TikTok’s obviously evil overlords ByteDance havem’t stopped cocking their legs up in outfit checks to make a statement yet, but a spokesperson called Alex Haurek says this actually is “an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it.”

“This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs,” asserted Haurek.

Now, if you think we’re picking on Joe Biden, Donald Trump tried some similar shit when he was in power alongside the Chinese owned app WeChat, but courts scuppered him, leaving him leading the polls for being most fucking useless in any type of court of law. Naturally, now Biden is going after TikTok, Trump says he’s not supportive of such a ban, because of course. We know how politicians work by now.

TikTok, presumably, is one of the few major platforms that would let Trump act however he wants, so there’s always that.