I had great expectations heading into this morning’s school commute with my kids. “President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year.” We finally had a topic in common to talk about. Sadly, when I tried to get their takes, they were both distracted … by TikTok. Friends in high government places have been warning me about TikTok for years. But I still have mixed feelings about banning an app, even one owned by foreign rival—even when such a ban could open the slim chance my kids would engage with me again. TikTok surely presents a threat, though it’s worth noting that threats are probably also posed by other China-owned brands that permeate American society, including the drones in our skies, the cars on our roads, the GE appliances in our kitchens, and the food on our tables. Yes, when it comes to TikTok, there is a particular threat to our personal data and the way social media can be tweaked to manipulate our politics. Yet, those are the same threats we’ve been fighting when it comes to Facebook and the modern iteration of Twitter. And of course, it’s TikTok’s competition that would benefit most from a ban. Though, I’m sure that hasn’t occurred to any of their lobbyists who pushed for this legislation in the name of national security.

+ “Former president Donald Trump is perhaps not the most credible critic of a potential TikTok ban, given that he tried to ban the app himself while in office before coming out against the bill that President Biden signed into law today. But amid a barrage of conspiratorial nonsense, unproven claims and insults as he criticizes the measure, Trump has hit on a kernel of truth: The most immediate winner from a ban would most likely be Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.” WaPo (Gift Article): Congress’ first tech crackdown in years is a gift to Big Tech.

+ FastCo: What the U.S. could learn from India’s TikTok ban. “At the time, India had about 200 million TikTok users, the most outside of China. And the company also employed thousands of Indians. TikTok users and content creators, however, needed a place to go — and the ban provided a multi-billion dollar opportunity to snatch up a big market. Within months, Google rolled out YouTube Shorts and Instagram pushed out its Reels feature. Both mimicked the short-form video creation that TikTok had excelled at. ‘And they ended up capturing most of the market that TikTok had vacated.'”

+ “The strategy employed by the lawmakers in recent weeks caught TikTok flat-footed. And while the app is unlikely to disappear from Americans’ phones as next steps are worked out, the measure stands out as the first time a U.S. president has signed a bill that could result in a wide ban of a foreign app.” NYT (Gift Article): ‘Thunder Run’: Behind Lawmakers’ Secretive Push to Pass the TikTok Bill.