Gongol.com Archives: January 2025
January 17, 2025
A healthy, even vigorous, skepticism of certain high-profile technology moguls is entirely justifiable. Elon Musk took Twitter private, changed its name in the hope of turning it into an all-encompassing lifestyle brand, and implemented policy changes that have opened the door to giving thoroughly antisocial voices all too prominent a platform. Mark Zuckerberg has deftly managed to turn Facebook into a publicly traded company while maintaining strictly dictatorial voting control, all while collecting vast amounts of data on the behavior of more than a billion users -- and their intellectual property. ■ To be wary of their intentions and behavior is a rational act. But as with virtually all human behaviors, their choices -- even the ones that may be selfish or even malevolent -- land on a spectrum. There are gradations to "bad", ranging from things we dislike to things that are purely evil. What constitutes a poison is often determined by the dose. ■ Robert Reich doesn't like their behavior. But for a person who has held a Cabinet office and has access to such an ample megaphone, he demonstrates a chronic disingenuity when he reaches for an applause line on social media. Consider this pronouncement on Reich's Bluesky account: "So it's dangerous for China to have the ability to access our data and manipulate us via social media apps. But it's okay for America's billionaires to have the ability to access our data and manipulate us via social media apps. Do I have this right?" ■ It is, of course, entirely fine to have concerns about how user data is treated -- whether it's in the hands of Facebook or Twitter/X or Snapchat or (as is the subtext of Reich's comments) TikTok. It is not, however, fine to pretend as though there is a true equivalence between what happens with data in the hands of American companies -- subject to supervision by the FTC, the SEC, American courts, and many other domestic legal structures -- and what happens with it in the hands of Chinese companies. ■ Facebook didn't conduct the OPM hack. Twitter wasn't responsible for the Equifax breach. Snapchat isn't running Volt Typhoon. All of those sinister acts -- and many others -- have been conducted by arms, agents, or allies of the government of the People's Republic of China (or, more precisely, of the Communist Party which controls China's government, military, and police). ■ TikTok and its parent, ByteDance, can protest all they want, but their social media platform is plainly considered a state asset by the government of China. ByteDance may be a state-owned enterprise or not -- those facts are hard to make plain. But even that ambiguity alone is enough to cast a very long shadow of doubt over any claims they might make to independence. ■ This doesn't make the TikTok ban a good policy. Nor does it make it a bad one. It simply means that Reich's pseudo-clever attempt to draw a false equivalence is far outside the bounds of reality. No matter what an American might think of Musk or Zuckerberg or any American social-media executive, recourse against them exists, should they commit misdeeds. That recourse may be slow and imperfect, but that's the way of law. ■ China's government, by contrast, exists far outside the reach of American law. It has shamelessly exploited that protection from consequences and weaponized data theft on an incomprehensible scale. And it wouldn't squeal so much about TikTok if it didn't have a hand in its operation. Reich is an objectively intelligent person. But in coloring people he doesn't like with the same brush he uses to paint a known malicious adversary, he's conducting himself like a useful idiot.
The first "Cold Weather Advisory" touching both Iowa and Nebraska
