How Twitter is doing the government’s bidding in India
The Biden administration’s threat to ban TikTok has been all the talk in the U.S. this week. Lawmakers are worried that TikTok poses a unique risk to the U.S. because it is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which ultimately answers to the Chinese government and Communist Party.
Many of their concerns are valid. But the level of Cold War-ish fanfare shows that lawmakers are losing sight of the bigger picture. As I’ve written before, banning TikTok (and any major social media platform) would mean censoring a major platform for free speech — a violation of the U.S. constitution and a clear signal to other countries that this kind of thing is A-OK. And while TikTok has a unique tie to China, it is arguably the least interesting among the super powerful global social media companies that collect tons of user data that governments might want to look at. Most other companies in this category are based in the U.S., where we still have no comprehensive privacy or data protection laws that could help prevent this kind of cross-border surveillance in the first place. Even China has the U.S. beat on that score. Wilmary Escoto, Anupam Chander and Julia Angwin all offered really valuable insights on the issue. Click around and check out their stuff.
These kinds of threats make for fun geopolitical theater, but they distract from the fact that big tech companies’ interests are often deeply intertwined with those of governments, big and small.
These dynamics were on full display in India this week, where Twitter suspended a smattering of accounts amid a police search for a Sikh secessionist preacher in Punjab — including the account of a member of parliament — all at the behest of state authorities. I dug into the events in Punjab below, with help from my Delhi-based colleagues Alishan Jafri and Shougat Dasgupta.