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  • Banning TikTok just puts a Band-Aid over social media’s problems

    When President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid bill into law on April 24, it started the clock on a nine-month window for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app. The president can extend the deadline by three months, and TikTok has indicated that it plans to challenge the law in court. If the law stands and the company fails to sell the app, TikTok will be blocked from any U.S. app store or web-hosting service. This would affect TikTok’s more than 170...

  • TikTok defenders miss chance to push for social media regulation amid ban backlash

    I’m a longtime social media critic, and I’m pretty indiscriminate in my criticism. I don’t trust any algorithm-based platforms or the executives who run them, be that X, Facebook or TikTok. And yet, while I’ve spent months deriding U.S. lawmakers’ laser focus on restricting access to TikTok, I’m starting to find the widespread fawning over the app — now that it might be banned in the U.S. — pretty disturbing. Last week, President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that included money for...

  • TikTok fears point to larger problem: Poor media literacy in the social media age

    FEATURE (THE CONVERSATION) — The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok on Apr. 23 after the Senate approved a $95 billion foreign aid bill. The bill includes a provision to force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a U.S. company or […]