“Entirely performative” — TikTokbanned or not, its probably here to stay, an Ars Frontiers 2023 recap Experts discussed the legal impossibility of a nationwide TikTok ban.
Ashley Belanger – May 26, 2023 1:20 pm UTC Enlarge / On May 22, Ashley Belanger (top left) moderated a panel featuring Ioana Literat (bottom left), Bryan Cunningham (top right), and Corynne McSherry (bottom right) for the Ars Frontiers 2023 session titled, “TikTokBanned or Not, It’s Probably Here to Stay.” reader comments 12 with
Ars Frontiers kicked off Monday with a panel called “TikTokBanned or Not, It’s Probably Here to Stay,” featuring experts on TikTok, data privacy, and cybersecurity.
It just so happened that the week before Ars Frontiers, TikTok was banned in Montana. This made the panel discussion particularly timely, as some TikTok creators and TikTok promptly sued the state, hoping to ensure that all Americans maintain access to the China-owned appdespite lawmakers’ national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might use TikTok to access US user data. Ars Frontiers 2023: “TikTokBanned or Not, It’s Probably Here to Stay.”
An associate professor in the communication media and learning technologies design program at Teachers College, Columbia University, Ioana Literat monitors how young people use social media. She has been researching TikTok since it first became available in the US. Banning TikTok at the “apex of its popularity,” Literat said, would set “a huge cultural and political precedent” for TikTok’s young user base, which is so politically active on the app.
“The government hasn’t really shown a compelling justification for the ban,” Literat said. “If you’re going to restrict freedom of speech in this way, you really need to make a very clear and potent case for the need for the ban” and really prove that “there’s no better alternatives to this ban.” Advertisement
Beyond rationales for a ban not being compelling, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Corynne McSherry said that state and federal pushes to ban TikTok were “entirely performative and a complete waste of time.” Her organization advocates for more comprehensive data privacy laws, rather than a TikTok ban.
Discussing the various First Amendment concerns that banning TikTok would cause, she agreed with Literat that “the government really hasn’t made much of an effort to get beyond rhetoric in terms of what we should really be worried about.”
“Perhaps you can hear in my voice, I’m a little frustrated about this,” McSherry said. “If we actually care about data privacy, which I think we shouldI think that’s really importantwhat we really need is comprehensive federal legislation that doesn’t just target one particular app, but actually really protects all of us by targeting all of the different ways in which companies are surveilling us all the time.”
Bryan Cunningham, a former White House lawyer and CPRI executive director at UCI Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, predicted that “Congress and the president will try to ban TikTok,” and “it’ll be a complete failure,” partly because “it’s not enforceable.”
“I don’t know how you think you’re gonna get the app off of tens of millions” of people’s phones, Cunningham said. “Are we gonna have border checkpoints where they look at your phone and see if the app is on there?” He said his young daughters would drive to Canada to put TikTok on their phones if they had to, and McSherry pointed out that many users would simply use a VPN service to access the app and skirt the ban. Advertisement
Cunningham said that in his view, concerns about the CCP using TikTok to spy on Americans were “very real,” but “there’s better ways to address them” than a ban. He agreed with McSherry that better data privacy laws would help to limit surveillance.
And TikTokers might even be totally onboard with going that route, Literat said. Her research shows that while young people using TikTok don’t seem to take the threat of a ban seriouslyand joked relentlessly about non-tech-savvy Congress members grilling TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chewthey are genuinely concerned about data privacy on social media.
McSherry said that in the past two years, she’s seen lawmakers get more serious about passing data privacy laws that would be “a non-performative way to actually help the citizenry” avoid tech company surveillance.
From the national security standpoint, Cunningham said that the threat goes beyond data privacy, though, and also raises concerns about the CCP manipulating TikTok’s algorithm to sow disinformation, restrict content, or push propaganda. To solve that problem, he recommended what he called a little-discussed alternative to the ban: imposing economic sanctions on TikTok owner ByteDance.
“Congress could give the president the authority, if he doesn’t have it, to impose economic sanctions on ByteDance,” Cunningham said.
Ars Frontiers is all about innovation, and both McSherry and Cunningham pointed out that new apps could emerge to replace TikTok at any point. This is one reason why focusing policy on one app seems extremely short-sighted. But for approximately 150 million Americans on TikTok today, Literat suggested that, at least for now, TikTok appears irreplaceable.
TikTok “has cemented this rolein our cultural imagination,” Literat said.”And it does have thatrole in young people’s lives,and I think it’s gonna bereally hard for a platformto just supplant that.That takes time.And, of course, users careabout where their friends are,where their peers are, and right now,they are on TikTok. So it would have to bea pretty mass migration,and I don’t see that happening yet to other platforms.” reader comments 12 with Ashley Belanger Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars
An Electron rocket launches the Baby Come Back mission from New Zealand on July 17, 2023.
Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab stock soared 8% Monday, building on a strong run fueled by space innovation.
Shares of the space infrastructure company have nearly doubled over the last two months following a slew of successful launches and a deal with the European Union.
The stock is up 63% year to date after surging nearly sixfold in 2024.
Last month, Rocket Lab announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to launch satellites for constellation navigation before December.
Rocket Lab also announced the successful launch of its 66th, 67th and 68th Electron rockets in June. The company successfully deployed two rockets from the same site in 48 hours.
Read more CNBC tech news
Rocket Lab competes with a growing list of companies in a maturing and increasingly competitive space industry with growing demand. Some of the main competitors in the sector include Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, which filed its prospectus to go public on Friday.
“For Electron, our little rocket, we’ve seen increased demand over the last couple of years and we’re not just launching single spacecraft — these are generally entire constellations for customers,” CEO Peter Beck told CNBC last month.
He said the company is producing a rocket every 15 days.
Beck, a New Zealand-native, founded the company in 2006. Since its debut on the Nasdaq in August 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, the Long Beach, California-based company’s market value has swelled to more than $19 billion.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed happened this weekend, and Ford’s electric SuperTruck managed to beat every other vehicle, gas or electric, to the top of the hill.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a yearly event on the grounds of Goodwood House, a historic estate in West Sussex, England. The event started in 1993, and has become one of the largest motorsports festivals in the world.
Many companies attend Goodwood to debut new models, and enthusiasts or race teams will show off rare or customized vehicles or race unique cars.
One of the central features of the event is the Goodwood hillclimb, a short one-way race up a small hill on the property. The track is only 1.17mi/1.89km long, with a 304ft/92.7m uphill climb. It’s not a particularly taxing event – merely a fun way to show off some classic or unique racing vehicles.
Many of these cars came just to show off, to do a demonstration run up the hill and join the company of the world’s most exotic hypercars.
But some cars show up for the glory, and join “the shootout,” the sprint up the hill for the best time.
And Ford didn’t come to show off, it came to win. And in order to win, it brought…. a truck.
The F-150 “SuperTruck” / Source: Ford
Ford’s SuperTruck is a one-off, 1,400+ horsepower prototype electric vehicle, supposedly based on the F-150 Lightning, but in fact bearing almost no similarity or even resemblance.
It’s been festooned with aerodynamic elements all about, lowered, equipped with race tires, and power output has been boosted to the aforementioned 1,400hp. It was driven by Romain Dumas, who Ford have been using since 2022 to drive their electric prototypes.
For the purposes of a hillclimb, perhaps the most important aspect is the Ford’s electric drive. Hillclimbs are a popular form of racing in Britain, and often consist of a short sprint up a small hill, showcasing acceleration and nimbleness more than anything.
Electric cars do well in this sort of racing due to their instant low-end torque, being able to jump off the line faster than the gas competition. They also tend to have plenty of torque, which helps with carrying them up the hills involved.
EVs do well on longer hillclimbs too, because as races reach higher and higher altitudes, gas cars suffer from reduced power due to less oxygen being available for combustion. EVs don’t suffer from this, so they tend to do well at, say, Pike’s Peak hillclimb – which, incidentally, Ford also brought its SuperTruck to, and also beat everybody at.
This year was not the first time Ford has brought a ridiculous electric chonker to Goodwood. Last year, it brought the SuperVan, which has a similar powertrain to the SuperTruck, and also beat everybody.
The SuperVan’s main competition last year was Subaru’s 670hp “Project Midnight” WRX, piloted by Scott Speed, who Dumas handily defeated by over two seconds, 43.98 to 46.07. And this year, the SuperTruck’s main competition was… the same Subaru, piloted by Speed, who Dumas handily defeated by just under two seconds, 43.23 to 45.03.
Ford did not, however, set an all-time record with the SuperTruck, in fact coming in fifth on the list of fastest runs ever. In front of it are two gas cars and two electric – the gas-powered Gould GR51, a tiny open-wheel race car, with a 42.90; an F1 car driven by Nick Heidfeld that set a 41.6 in 1999; the electric VW ID.R, also piloted by Dumas with a 39.90 (which broke Heidfeld’s 20-year record); and the all-time record holder the electric McMurtry Spierling “fan car,” with a mind-blowing 39.08 in 2019.
You’ll notice something similar about all of these – they’re all small racecars that are actually built for speed, whereas the truck is… a big truck. And yet, Ford still managed to beat every single challenger this year, with its big honker of an EV, because EVs are just better.
Watch the run in full below, starting at 9:34. Blink and you’ll miss it.
And now, if Ford continues its pattern, we’re looking forward to seeing the Super Mustang Mach-E at Goodwood next year, which did well this year at a tough Pike’s Peak, getting first in its class and second overall, likely due to inclement conditions that limited running to the lower portion of the course, limiting the EV’s high-altitude advantages.
Given the Super Mustang is a real racecar, and not a chonky truck, it might even give VW’s ID.R time a run for its money (but, frankly, really has no shot at the overall record, because the Spierling’s “fans” give it an absurdly unbeatable amount of downforce).
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A view of the Pentagon on December 13, 2024, in Washington, DC. Home to the US Defense Department, the Pentagon is one of the world’s largest office buildings.
Daniel Slim | Afp | Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday said it’s granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.
The DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said the awards will help the agency accelerate its adoption of “advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges.” The companies will work to develop AI agents across several mission areas at the agency.
“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Doug Matty, the DoD’s chief digital and AI officer, said in a release.
Elon Musk’s xAI also announced Grok for Government on Monday, which is a suite of products that make the company’s models available to U.S. government customers. The products are available through the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, which allows federal government departments, agencies, or offices to purchase them, according to a post on X.
OpenAI was previously awarded a year-long $200 million contract from the DoD in 2024, shortly after it said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
In June, the company launched OpenAI for Government for U.S. federal, state, and local government workers.