Troubling Blandness in the RESTRICT Act
How could this act affect e-Commerce?
This is a long article, but I hope it isn't that long of a read. I am, however, asking you to read the RESTRICT Act, or S.686, otherwise known as “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act”. This document is available online now at Congress.org and it outlines a broad and seemingly insidious reach into American social and business lives. And the authors of this act never mention TikTok or ByteDance.
But first, a brief and very recent background to this Act...
Lawmakers Chewed Chew and Spit Him Out
A week ago, on 23 March, lawmakers took TikTok CEO ShouZi Chew to task during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce. If you heard even a snippet of that hearing, you may have cringed at bi-partisan rants against Chew that were so out of touch with American culture today. The accusations also seemed cherry-picked to throw Chew off balance.
Granted, Chew dodged questions about China's human rights abuses against the Uyghurs. But calling Chew’s company "TikTak" and ignoring the best of the reels on that platform and, instead, displaying the worst video and nothing else before the hearing was both hypocrisy and Barnum and Bailey showmanship at its best.
We have home-grown platforms that represent a threat to this country. Nothing has been thrown at those media or social outlets like what was displayed at that hearing last Thursday. I never cease to be amazed at the level of disrespect and literal finger-pointing our lawmakers feel free to display to fill a political agenda.
TikTok, a child of Chinese company ByteDance, hosts over 150 million American users. TikTok users first heard rumblings about TikTok weeks ago as the federal government banned TikTok from their employees' phones. Some state governments followed suit and banned TikTok on their employees’ phones. Now this act, nicknamed the "TikTok Act" is threatening to ban the platform across the U.S. along with some other possible “holdings.”
I have a feeling now, though, after reading the act, that the show with Chow was a diversion. This bill never mentions TikTok or ByteDance. Instead, it uses a broad language...the broadest possible...that could end America's digital culture as we know it if the Secretary of Commerce and a sitting president produce bans and penalties for any social platform, any holding (such as cryptocurrency), all PVNs, or any software or hardware.
