TikTok ban

TikTok is in the crosshairs of our national security officials.

And should the security officials get their way with the Chinese-owned Internet app, our soldiers and cops soon won't be able to access TikTok on their smartphones and other digital devices.

In justifying the proposed ban, National Security Council officials say Filipino security personnel should be made more "security conscious" given the "information operations and psychological warfare" being conducted by other countries.

The security officials didn't specifically name the countries waging such "information operations and psychological warfare."
Several countries, however, have recently either totally or partially banned TikTok over fears that China could be using the app for spying or for disseminating propaganda.

An NSC official admits the country's security agencies are closely monitoring those TikTok bans, indicating that Filipino security officials are as worried as their foreign counterparts about the possibility China is using the app to spy and spread misinformation and disinformation.

Now, even if the security officials didn't detail how TikTok could be used as a spying tool — presumably because this in itself is top secret — what is publicly known about TikTok raises alarming security concerns.

Dismissing security concerns about TikTok as mere paranoia won't get us anywhere near learning the app's true nature.

So, what is TikTok really?

Right off, throw out the notion the short-video internet app is just another social media platform. It is not. In fact, TikTok can't be categorized as a social media platform.

Needless to say, in the last 20 years or so, "social media has altered the way we interact with popular culture. An explosion of user-generated content — attributable to cheaply produced electronics and platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter)—has widened the focus of popular discourse, shifting peoples' attention from traditional media to the proliferating mobile screens.

However, TikTok's spectacular rise shows that the app's strength derives more from its passive "entertainment" platform than an interactive discursive platform like other social media networks.

In fact, one recent social media study categorically says TikTok is an "entertainment platform" with "massive" differences from either Facebook or X.

TikTok's tangible "entertainment" design also encourages social behaviors different from those prompted by other social networks.

Recent research shows, for instance, that while 70 percent of Instagram users regularly post to the platform, barely a third of TikTokkers do.

And, as one TikTok executive admits, the app's 1.5-billion users often "say they check Facebook and they check Instagram and Twitter. But they don't check TikTok; they tell us they watch TikTok."

"Watching" then is the defining human activity on TikTok, just like TV. And like TV, TikTok's contents are something one watches rather than interacts with.

But it is precisely that "entertainment" function where TikTok's danger lies.

TikTok is making full use of TV's language, a language that, as media theorists often tell us, is about where "simple messages are preferable to… complex ones," where "drama is to be preferred over exposition."

In short, what TikTok updates in our digital age is the TV dictum that for any idea to be worthwhile or influential, it must first entertain.

As such, what will happen then if, amid our current tensions with China, TikTok's entertaining vignettes will somehow suspiciously look like they are being used to downplay to unwitting Filipinos China's complex aggressive tactics in the West Philippine Sea?

This will probably be easier to do on TikTok than on TV. While TV gears itself toward a nebulous mass audience, TikTok's algorithms tailor it to various social nooks and niches — TikTok's "For You" page auto-plays content tailored to one's preferences.

Now, if those same tailored algorithms end up somehow on Filipino soldiers' and cops' preferences, imagine how those supposedly innocent — but insidious — amusing diversions might influence the very people tasked with upholding our national sovereignty.