Global Online Free Expression as Cold War: Tik-Tok, USA, China and the Rest of Us.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

The United States of America (USA) Supreme Court on Friday 17 January 2025 unanimously upheld a decision by both the executive government and congress to indefinitely ban the hugely popular social media platform Tik-Tok.  

The main reason for this was/is the security threat the social media application would cause the USA from China.   With the key element to this being that Tik-Tok is partly owned (at least 20%) by entities affiliated to the government of China. 

The key condition to a reversal being cited as that the current owners of the platform remove the part Chinese ownership and give control of it to American companies or investors.  

Also add to this the assumption that the new owners will get the Tik-Tok algorithm that makes it so popular and different to other social media platforms. 

The application has a reported 170 million users in the USA.  And as expected these users have sort of gone up in social media arms against the move.  Citing reasons such as how the platform allowed them greater access to new information that they would not have gotten via the usual ones that are owned by American companies or individuals.

They also cite the fact that Tik-tok was key in either promoting their small businesses or influencer incomes to the extent that they not only managed to pay off debts but also earn decent regular income from it or its promotional reach.  And this is just within the USA before we look at the application’s role in free expression in the rest of the world, including its other version for domestic use in China. 

The outgoing Biden administration has said it will not make any decisions about the implementation of this ban.  The incoming president Donald Trump has hinted at the fact that he will think about the possibility of also not implementing the ban or alternatively issuing an executive order to keep it going in the USA for a specified period of time. 

Tik-tok itself, (at least its American and Singaporean ownership side of things) has been busy lobbying to get this ban removed.  Its executive officials have made representations to the US Senate while also promoting free expression and the American constitution’s First Amendment (the almost absolute right to free expression in the USA) as a key issue around this matter.

Well it turns out that for now and the short term future, national security concerns override freedom of expression.  More-so when the threats are coming from the USA’s newest hegemonic threat in the form of China and its technological advancements.

Or how China, in the words of members of the USA Senate, Congress and Biden’s outgoing administration, is trying to change the cultural lifestyles of Americans. And therefore influence how their politics, economics or even military technologies may be understood, spied upon or deployed.

The only catch however is that there are also other social media platforms that shape, spy on and influence human behavior that are already present in America and globally.  These are the well-known Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), X (Twitter) and Youtube to cite just a few.  With all of the latter’s owners having a vested profit interest in ensuring that Tik-tok does not expand its market influence in the USA as well as globally. 

So essentially it is a head on collision of what Greek activist Yanis Varoufakis has referred to as ‘techno-feudalists’.  These being those that monopolise emerging technologies and social media companies in the name of capitalism and with the aid of the dynamics of emergent global cold wars between the USA, China and partly Russia. 

You may ask, “But where is the rest of the world in this?”  The quick answer is that this would appear to be a dispute between the USA and a part Chinese owned social media platform.  

The more organic understanding of this is however about the fact that there is now a renewed global battle to control ‘hearts and minds’ via social media and faster or more efficient algorithms.  Such as the one that Tik-tok represents. 

And this is somewhat symbolized by how even the Americans themselves are attacking their own government about the ban and its impact on their economic livelihoods or mental well being.  Or how they have been shifting to other even more Chinese owned platforms such as RedNote. 

Where we consider the rest of us in this dispute, there is the global north and the global south.

In the global north, it is almost a given that Europe, though not affected by this ban, will not necessarily challenge it.  Even if it could. The European Union, NATO and other related organisations tend to fall in line with America’s position on China.  More-so when it comes to issues around technology and allegations of military and civilian espionage. 

For the global south and specifically in our African context, this issue is probably perceived as a small matter that is geographically far away from us. But the usage of Tik-tok is expanding on the continent.  It may not have as many of the profits for small businesses or influencers as it does in the USA but for sure, Tik-tok is not going away from Africa anytime soon.  It has however not raised any geopolitical or Cold War queries as it has done in the global north.

We would however do well to take note of at least two issues.

The first being that the format of understanding what online free expression should democratically mean is changing. 

For us in Zimbabwe, we are very familiar with the whole idea of ‘national security’ trumping’ freedom of expression’. 

And when the same dictum is used in the USA we also know it can also be used here at home and across our highly opportunistically repressive governments across the continent. More-so because the judgment of the USA Supreme Court will now forever be a point of global legal reference for this sort of censorship and protectionism.

Secondly, as Africans, we need to know that now we may be played one against the other in this new global cyber cold war between the USA and China. Even if it all just appears to be about social media.  It is now also about the right to privacy versus the right to free expression versus a state’s national security interests.  It is almost an ideological question around what comes first and following whose model?   

In this we need to balance the same three issues, free expression, national security and privacy in a much more democratic manner.  Even if we do not control the algorithms and probably never will. 

While this new global cold war over social media platforms is something we can only watch from a distance, it should not change our commitment to specific contextual democratic values that ignore the profit motivation of the techno-feudalists and their governments’ interests. 

We just need to know that in this instance of the American Tik-tok saga, emperors tend to have no clothes. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) (takurazhangazha.com)