Why the TikTok ban matters

The seesawing weekend TikTik fiasco has the fingerprints of oligarchy all over it

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, more commonly known as the TikTok ban, was in effect for a solid 18 hours over the weekend.

On Saturday evening, a message popped up for all of us TikTok users. The note informed patrons that a “law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US”, but assured users in the same message that the company was “fortunate that President Trump has indicted that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok after he takes office”, before forcing users to exit the app. American TikTokers posted their grief and outrage on other platforms and went to bed; on Sunday, those users woke up and by the time Sunday mimosa brunch was done in the early afternoon, TikTok was back. The explanation for the reapparition of TikTok- not even 24 hours after the ban- heralded the President-elect, saying that due to “President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”.

The public have never been given a specific reason for the ban itself, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) holds a tight grip on their tech. Sarah Levy Gottfriedson in the Columbia Journalism Review found that “Private entities in China are legally required to hand over users’ data on request—without question—to the CCP; the US government also worries that the CCP could leverage TikTok to influence public opinion on foreign soil.” Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein on Politico’s Tech podcast acknowledged that declassified evidence is scant and that “there is no smoking gun,” while clarifying that “there is a gun, it’s loaded, it’s pointing at us, the finger is on the trigger.” Even so, TikTok users were enraged and morose with the removal of access to the app.

It was a whiplash weekend for TikTok fans, to say the least, one that has many wondering what exactly happened?

To quote Hamilton, “no one else was in the room where it happened”, that is, the meeting between President (then President-elect) Trump and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. However, historical precedent of similar (if less tech-y) collusion, Trump’s budding bromances with tech giants, and the fact the Chew was in attendence at Trump’s inauguration; can all give us some idea of what went down.

Rich assholes controlling media isn’t new. With everything being retro and vintage now, the throwback to a Gilded Age era government was inevitable. In the Gilded Age, the lord of media was William Randolph Hearst, a turn of the century mogul who at his peak had an audience of 20 million Americans. Other capitalists of the time included Henry Ford, automobile manufacturer; John D. Rockefeller, oil baron; Cornelius Vanderbilt, railroad magnate; JP Morgan, New York banker; and Andrew Carnegie, steel owner and industrialist.

These men built up massive sums; hundred of billions of dollars in today’s money. Their large sums came with political power during a time when power lay in atrocious men who did heinous things. Henry Ford, for example, bought the Dearborn Independent, turning the Michigan newspaper into a machine for advancing his virulent antisemitism in the 1930s; while Hearst willingly published articles written by Adolph Hitler during his rise to power.

The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act was founded to break the chokehold that monopolies held. As a result, Standard Oil and American Tobacco, among dozens of other companies, were broken up.

Sound familiar? The New York and Chicago industrialists of yesterday are now Bay Area tech moguls of the present, and have embraced the far-right ideology of Hearst and Ford. Elon Musk was accused by French President Emmanual Macron of foreign election interference due to his comments on X that seemingly endorsed the German far-right party Alternativ für Deutschland (AFD) in the upcoming elections. Musk, who gave a gesture that was similar to a Nazi salute at an inaugoral celebration speech. Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) ended fact-checking on Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, and ended DEI poliecies at the company.

The comparisons between the “Broligarchy” and the Industrialists stop there. Step into any metropolis in the US: there is undoubtly a museum wing, a park, a school, or a library named for Rockefeller, Carnegie, Pritzker, Crown, JP Morgan. These men, while yes: being disgustingly wealthy, also took philanthropy deeply seriously (even if they had a name on a plaque in response). Andrew Carnegie, a self-made billionaire, wrote “The Gospel of Wealth” in 1889: in it he described inherited wealth as “injudicious”, and advocated for the distribution of wealth to the public benefit within a lifetime. When he died in 1919, Carnegie had given away almost 90 percent of his wealth. Cases like this leave MAGA with a (even worse) taste in your mouth.

Trump’s oligarchy is rooted in-and funded by- Big Tech.

This brings us back to TikTok. Trump’s oligarchy is rooted in tech moguls like Chew, the fact that he would workout some behind-the-scenes deal to bring the immensely popular app back makes sense for a populist. What makes less sense, however, is the fact that Trump himself called for the ban in 2020, reversing course only recently. The message users received adds to the ingratiation of tech to MAGA: although Trump was inaugurated Monday, the message over the weekend referred to him as “President,” forgoing the accurate “-elect” in the title.

The quick turnaround hints at a plot for popularity. Ronald Reagan has been alleged to have pulled off an “October Surprise” in 1980, in which the Republican’s campaign conspired with the Iranian government to detain American hostages for prolongued time in Iran, resulting in the loss of Jimmy Carter. Even earlier, in 1968, Nixon and his campaign colluded with South Vietnamese officials to sabotage President Lyndon B. Johnson’s peace talk attempts to end the Vietnam War. Nixon’s efforts, named the Chennault Affair, were one reason for Johnson’s exit from the race and Nixon’s prevail.

If the last eight years have taught us anything, it is that Trump and conspiracy go hand-in-hand.

For any doubters of this scheme, the bill got widespread bipartisan support in the House, where it passed in April with a 360-58 vote, and SCOTUS voted to uphold in an unanimous decision- 3 justices of which Trump himself nominated. In the midst of his final few days in office, Biden said that the enforcement of the TikTok ban would fall to Trump, meaning that TikTok removed its services from U.S.-based users on their own accord.

To put it crassly, TikTok and Trump have served bullshit on a silver platter, and users are eating it up. The oligarchy is here; but instead of New Money East Coasters who build museums and libraries, it’s chronically online, former incels who give their children names like “X Æ A-12” and donate hundreds of millions for the pompous inaugural activites of fascists. The days of Gilded Age oligarchy are over; it’s the entering of the Broligarchy.

While some dazedly celebrate the return of TikTok by doomscrolling, other creators have avoided returning to the legal muck. TikTok was fun, I had a good time, and it is okay to be sad. But to condemn the removal as censorship, or to praise Trump as the Messiah of TikTok, is unspeakably dangerous to democracy.