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"Information Looking for People" -- Lawfare
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/information-looking-for-peoplePaul M. Barrett
A review of Emily Baker-White, "Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok" (Norton, 2025).
I thought this might interest some who worry about the media landscape.
Marshall McLuhan: "All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
In 2022, journalist Emily Baker-White published articles in BuzzFeed News casting doubt on claims by TikTok that the short-form video platform was insulating personal data of its American users from the app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and from the Chinese government. Her reporting landed as members of Congress and officials in the Biden administration were alleging that TikTok could be manipulated by Beijing to surveil Americans, censor criticism of China, and spread Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
Predictably, ByteDance and TikTok denigrated Baker-White's work. Then, the journalist's further digging, combined with whistleblower leaks, revealed that ByteDance had unleashed internal corporate sleuths to do precisely what its representatives had sworn under oath in congressional testimony that the company would not--and could not--do: They had used Baker-White's TikTok account to track her movements and communication, both online and in the real world. It emerged that ByteDance also had targeted a British journalist with the Financial Times.
Caught dead to rights, ByteDance eventually apologized, fired a handful of employees, and promised to mend its ways.
Now Baker-White, who currently writes for Forbes, has published an account of the rise of the Chinese social media behemoth. "Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok" describes an innovative, influential, consistently deceitful, and hugely successful corporate juggernaut. TikTok has defied attempts to rein it in and morphed into a digital force that remains available as a tool of manipulation--and not just by the Chinese regime. Embraced by President Trump and some of his most prominent billionaire allies, TikTok has morphed into a key component of a burgeoning MAGA-friendly cultural-information complex that also includes the Ellison family's database management company, Oracle; its expanding Hollywood conglomerate, Skydance Media; Skydance-owned CBS News; and Elon Musk's X, a social media platform popular among right-wing influencers and trolls.
. . .
Predictably, ByteDance and TikTok denigrated Baker-White's work. Then, the journalist's further digging, combined with whistleblower leaks, revealed that ByteDance had unleashed internal corporate sleuths to do precisely what its representatives had sworn under oath in congressional testimony that the company would not--and could not--do: They had used Baker-White's TikTok account to track her movements and communication, both online and in the real world. It emerged that ByteDance also had targeted a British journalist with the Financial Times.
Caught dead to rights, ByteDance eventually apologized, fired a handful of employees, and promised to mend its ways.
Now Baker-White, who currently writes for Forbes, has published an account of the rise of the Chinese social media behemoth. "Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over TikTok" describes an innovative, influential, consistently deceitful, and hugely successful corporate juggernaut. TikTok has defied attempts to rein it in and morphed into a digital force that remains available as a tool of manipulation--and not just by the Chinese regime. Embraced by President Trump and some of his most prominent billionaire allies, TikTok has morphed into a key component of a burgeoning MAGA-friendly cultural-information complex that also includes the Ellison family's database management company, Oracle; its expanding Hollywood conglomerate, Skydance Media; Skydance-owned CBS News; and Elon Musk's X, a social media platform popular among right-wing influencers and trolls.
. . .