{"id":624624,"date":"2023-04-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/01\/whats-going-on-with-tiktok-ask-a-victorian-prince\/"},"modified":"2023-04-01T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T12:00:00","slug":"whats-going-on-with-tiktok-ask-a-victorian-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/01\/whats-going-on-with-tiktok-ask-a-victorian-prince\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Going On With TikTok? Ask a Victorian Prince"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before the House<\/span> Energy and Commerce Committee had even concluded its hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew last week,\u00a0users<\/a> took to the app to\u00a0mock<\/a> members of Congress for their questions. Lawmakers were lambasted for being out of touch with the realities of social media. One younger TikTokker\u00a0called<\/a> the hearings \u201cthe most boomer thing I have ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the TikTok controversy can\u2019t simply be chalked up to generational differences, as the very notion of data privacy doesn\u2019t stem from the invention of social media, the internet, or even computers. Instead, it\u2019s traceable to a watershed legal decision in 1849, when Prince Albert of England sued a printer for trying to publish a catalog about drawings he and Queen Victoria had made depicting their personal family life. All of the elements at play in data privacy debates today\u2014personal information, technological innovation, and national security\u2014were also integral to that case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As someone who studies the history of technology, I believe that understanding this history of data privacy can help disentangle the personal and national security interests being conflated in the ongoing debate about whether and how TikTok is a threat to Americans. When lawmakers nest national issues within concerns about personal privacy that they have done little to address, they play on constituents\u2019 fears about their own information without actually mitigating them.<\/p>\n

The 1849 ruling in favor of Prince Albert laid the groundwork for thinking about data as at once personal\u00a0and\u00a0national, rather than simply one or the other. In the case, Albert represented not only himself but also the monarch, Queen Victoria. The catalog in question included descriptions of etchings that depicted the royals\u2019 children in the nursery, their friends, and their dogs alongside commentary and critique. (The sketches themselves had already been ruled private property in a separate case.) In other words, it turned the royal couple\u2019s private life into information and made it available for sale.<\/p>\n

This proved a foundational case on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1890, American privacy laws were established by citing this 1849 case, arguing that even celebrities have \u201cthe right to one\u2019s personality.\u201d By prohibiting the catalog, the 1849 case affirmed personal privacy and defined it primarily through family life. Because the etchings were for Albert and Victoria\u2019s \u201cprivate use and pleasure<\/a>,\u201d sharing data about them would strip them of their right to domestic privacy. In 1849, monarchies had been toppling across Europe, and England\u2019s was shaky too. When a judge ruled that the royal family\u2019s \u201cprivate life forms their unquestionable title,\u201d he defined their sovereignty through\u2014not separately from\u2014their domestic life. Thus, this case set a precedent of implying national security through the rhetoric of private protection. But foregrounding personal privacy in this way is unethical unless it is backed by policy to ensure that those rights are protected.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With this in mind, we can more clearly see how the TikTok regulations currently under discussion frame national data privacy in terms of personal privacy.\u00a0 The notion that the Chinese government could\u00a0spy on<\/a> or\u00a0blackmail<\/a> key government employees via their TikTok activity and manipulate users\u2019 personal content are matters of national security. But the way officials talk about them highlights individual privacy online, the \u201cprivate use and pleasure\u201d of the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lawmakers are emphasizing the threat to individual privacy rather than appealing solely to a sense of collective or national safety. For instance, in the hearing, Washington representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers directly addressed \u201cthe American people watching today\u201d to\u00a0declare<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cTikTok is a weapon \u2026 to spy on you, manipulate what you see and exploit [it] for future generations.\u201d As in the 19th-century ruling, the significance of personal privacy is emotionally heightened by invoking the \u201csacred precincts of private and domestic life.\u201d Representative Rodgers, for example,\u00a0demanded<\/a> said the government \u201cmust provide the strongest protections possible for our children.\u201d And New Jersey representative Frank Pallone\u00a0argued that \u201cTikTok\u2019s addictive algorithms recommend videos to teens that create and exacerbate feelings of emotional distress.\u201d This emphasis on the personal privacy of TikTok users rings hollow.\u00a0This rhetorical move fixates on the personal but does little to protect the individual rights of the American people watching.<\/p>\n

TikTok\u2019s data collection doesn\u2019t differ substantially from that of other social media apps (none of which are being threatened with shutdown). Though the opacity of privacy policies makes it difficult\u00a0even for experts to declare definitively<\/a>,\u00a0most agree<\/a> that TikTok\u2019s data collection is comparable to other social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram. So, if user data and content manipulation are inalienable rights to privacy, that should be applied across the board, not just to one company. The potential influence of the Chinese government does set TikTok apart from these other platforms, of course. But examining how the line between personal and national security interests has been blurred in earlier foundational cases underscores that it is misguided to foreground individual rights to privacy in theory while, in practice, doing little to bolster them. Banning TikTok might secure data from the Chinese government, but it wouldn\u2019t affect any other social media platform\u2019s data collection.<\/p>\n

As a parent, I\u2019m concerned about my teenager\u2019s privacy on social media, but my concern isn\u2019t limited to companies supervised by the Chinese government. I already know that her privacy is compromised by Instagram and SnapChat as well as by TikTok, and I resent having my maternal heartstrings tugged on in the name of political gamesmanship.<\/p>\n

Such calls make national security feel\u00a0personal but do not strengthen individual rights to data privacy. If TikTok represents a national security threat, then it should be discussed explicitly in those terms. Individual data privacy rights should be protected on their own accord.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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WIRED Opinion publishes articles by outside contributors representing a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions<\/em> here<\/em><\/a>, and see our submission guidelines<\/em> here<\/em><\/a>. Submit an op-ed at<\/em> op*****<\/span>@***<\/span>ed.com<\/span><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\n Megan Ward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee had even concluded its hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew last week,\u00a0users took to the app to\u00a0mock members of Congress for their questions. Lawmakers were lambasted for being out of touch with the realities of social media. One younger TikTokker\u00a0called the hearings \u201cthe most boomer thing I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":624625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[903,534,947],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-624624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-going","8":"category-financial","9":"category-whats"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}