This sounds like a script out of Hollywood -- one that Steve Mnuchin himself might have produced. Here's the pitch: A multi-billionaire with too much time on his hands decides to buy out a social-media platform to save free expression and civil rights in America. Along the way, he meets zany characters like, er, Chinese intel operatives, and ends up exposing government influence and interference in its operations.

On second thought, no one will buy that. It would never happen! 

Except it might ... again. Maybe:

BREAKING

Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin tells @andrewrsorkin that he’s interested in buying TikTok and is putting a group of investors together.

He wouldn’t tell Andrew which investors are in his group.

Worth noting that former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has also… pic.twitter.com/T9aqXPKGmE

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 14, 2024

Unlike Elon Musk, Mnuchin has no intention of taking TikTok private. He wants to fold in existing US investors and make sure that the shares are widely distributed to force a collaborative management structure, the former Treasury Secretary told CNBC, with no entity controlling more than 10%. Mnuchin wants the platform in American hands, especially with its influence on American youth:

“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”

The bill is now headed to the Senate, where its future is uncertain, though President Joe Biden’s administration has indicated that he will sign the legislation if it passes.

“This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” Mnuchin said.

Is that now the point of this forced divestiture? If it should be owned by "U.S. businesses," then a U.S. business should have built it. If a US business was unable to innovate or fund such a venture, then maybe we should ask ourselves why. And if that's the policy that this legislation serves, what else will Congress do to force divestitures of foreign-owned businesses in the future? And why wouldn't we be satisfied if it became, say, a British or Canadian or Estonian business?

It does give a new meaning to "Buy American," though. And not in a good way.

I do agree that TikTok represents a significant threat in terms of data trawling to American consumers. The proper and legal solution to that is blocking access to it in the US, though, not forcing its sale. Besides, that's not the real basis for the legislative effort to force ByteDance to sell off TikTok or the CCP to sell off ByteDance. It's the platform's undeniable power to propagandize and radicalize its subscribers that is driving the divest-or-ban effort. 

Congress wants to cut off propaganda streams that serve our enemies, which is a good idea in theory -- but a terrible idea in practice, especially in this case. Mnuchin has read Congress perfectly in this regard, which is why he's pitching his venture as an All-American Effort, and why British, Canadian, or Estonian ownership wouldn't solve the issue for lawmakers. But who defines "enemy" in terms of propaganda -- and who defines "ally," for that matter?  

Let's take the other billionaire rescuer of a social-media platform as an example. Elon Musk has not been an unmitigated good as owner of Twitter, but he's been a vast improvement on previous ownership and management, which turned themselves into an arm of Big Brother in government efforts to suppress dissent and debate. In doing so, however, Musk has turned himself into an opponent of the ruling elite in the US and has faced accusations of allowing and promoting "misinformation" on his platform simply by not censoring it. Progressive activists have done their best to transform Musk into an "enemy" of their agenda. 

How long before a future Congress considers a forced divestiture of Twitter on the basis of "propaganda" and "misinformation"? Especially if Musk's enemies start arguing that he's corrupting the youth of America?

Musk is now an American citizen, of course, so that may be more difficult to do. But what about technology and platforms that are owned by other non-Americans? In today's present environment, what would happen if an Israeli consortium attempted to buy TikTok, for instance, or owned a competing platform? Would that pass muster, or would the left accuse its ownership of using the platform to “normalize genocide” or reinforce occupier supremacy, or whatever word salad might get created in the near future? You'd better believe they will.

In a very real sense, Congress has created a precedent to penalize speech by seizing businesses that publish it. These kinds of precedents always start with bad actors -- and the CCP is definitely that -- but they don't usually stop there. Power created will be power used, and power abused at some point. 

As for this effort, Mnuchin's money is as good as anyone's, I suppose, and perhaps better than most. But who else will be buying into TikTok? Will they want to use the platform for actual free speech, as Musk has imperfectly tried to do, or speech that conforms to the ruling progressive clique and its grip on Big Tech platforms, such as Facebook, Google, etc? I very much suspect that the fiscal elites that would have to be part of this purchase would want the latter, in which case the effort won't have done much -- perhaps not even on consumer-privacy concerns. They will just change out one form of propaganda for another, and it might not even be all that much different than the status quo. 

There's really only one way to combat propaganda and misinformation, and that's with more speech and more independent voices. That's why HotAir and Townhall Media don't rely on Big Tech or the Protection Racket Media for our voices, analyses, opinions, and especially our values. 

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