A Tik Tok Ban Takes Us Further Down the Slippery Slope

Is banning Tik Tok a wise move from a long term perspective

Even with the disclaimer I am about to make, I know that I am going to get flamed for this, but here it goes.  I want to make clear that I do not support Tik Tok, the CCP, or any other entity that is associated with China, Russia, or their allies.  This disclaimer will obviously fall upon deaf ears with those that do not have the capacity to understand the nuances of what I am about to discuss. There are many calls from both sides of the aisle, to ban Tik Tok from America to “protect the children”.  I am concerned that this is going to continue down a slippery slope when it comes to government censorship and suppression of speech.  As I discussed in one of my previous articles, there will always be a pretext to justify a power grab by a corrupt state.  I don’t want to act like intentions by our elected officials here are not sincere, but as the famous saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now why did I say that this would continue to take us down a slippery slope, rather than suggest that we are creating the slippery slope?  Because we have already been there.  On October 1, 2016 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and its oversight, was handed over to a non-profit group with many stakeholders that would take into account the views or experts, companies, nation states, and academics, while assessing the use and operation of the naming system and how it is implemented.  Before this transfer of influence occurred, the oversight was the responsibility of the US.  This Domain Name System (DNS) has influence on internet content in the hands of an international organization, where the so called shareholders with questionable motives, are given the power to affect what we see.  ICANN was handed over to a group of globalists by the Obama Administration. 

My next example of censorship took place under the Trump Administration, and involved the shutdown of backpage.com after indictments on multiple people that run the site, on 93 counts of crimes ranging from “money laundering” to “running a website to facilitate prostitution”.  Now I have no issue here with the indictments or the closure of the sight per se.  However, after the seizure, backpage.com showed multiple seals of government agencies, FBI, DOJ, US Treasury, and others, and reads “backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized.  Even though these people got caught, and got what they deserved, the thought of the DOJ having the ability to seize websites, sent chills up my spine.  Ince again it’s not the fact that it was shut down, it is the fact that it was shut down by our federal law enforcement agency.  This is my attempt to illustrate the threat to freedom of speech, by showing that precedent does exist for this type of government authority to be exercised under particular circumstances.

Now back to Tik Tok, and the calls to end it reign in America.  Complete bans usually have dire consequences, no matter what the pretext.  The point I’m trying to make here is that a judgment on content based on subjective criteria, with or without a legal basis and the decision to prevent the viewing of content, cannot be entrusted to a corrupt government, or any government for that matter.   So, let’s say the Biden Administration decides that they want to ban Truth Social because they say it contains hate speech and misinformation.  This is not true, but with the media, government, academia, and other institutions that will jump on board with shutting something down, it makes censorship of this magnitude not only possible, but probable. The Democrat Party has completely went off the rails, and is not much different from Communist Party USA (CPUSA).  CPUSA has not run one of their own candidates for over a decade because they have been happy with the candidates that the Democrat Party nominates because they are aligned ideologically.  The Republicans, or more specifically the so called conservatives, don’t stand on principle and also seem to have an infatuation with banning things that they don’t like.  If there is one thing that leftists and conservatives have in common, it is that they love to use government authority to ban things that they don’t like.  If you support allowing government to ban things, or shut down websites when your guy is in charge of the executive branch, then you cannot complain when a member of the opposing party wields the same power from the oval office.  If you throw a fit with one, but not the other, you are a hypocrite.

Once again this is not in defense of Tik Tok, it is merely a willingness to be consistent when it comes to governance.   We are already on this slippery slope and we must be very careful how we move forward.