If you don’t want the Chinese to know precisely how collectively stupid we Americans are, ban TikTok. Our grotesque level of ignorance was used by Cambridge Analytica utilizing harvested Facebook data that helped propel Donald Trump to power and England into Brexit. Knowing the weak points of a population allows those with the right tools to guide the misguided into traps by exploiting the dumbest things they believe. The American policy influencers are aware of this, of course, and many have been using this to further their own agendas. Theoretically, though, it could work the other way, too, where the exploitative force uses its data to move people away from their profound ignorance, thus subverting the agenda of those who gain from the stupidity of the masses.

I’m not saying TikTok desires either scenario, nor can I suggest that some agency or group in America would want to see the continued dumbing down of its population, but I do know that we are doing NOTHING to negate our right to believe whatever level of crazy we choose to cultivate in the name of freedom.

I started this post in early November, and just now, on November 15, 2022, FBI Director Christopher Wray was quoted saying he is “extremely concerned” about TikTok’s operations in the U.S. and continued with, “We do have national security concerns at least from the FBI’s end about TikTok, including the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users. Or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose.”

For me, this translates to, “We don’t need a foreign government knowing precisely how stupid and easily influenced our half-educated population is.”