You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout. I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is comin’ to town.”
For a Christmas song, this family favorite sounds a lot like a threat. It’s using jolly old Saint Nick like the Boogie Man to scare children into behaving. They aren’t even allowed to pout or cry. The song came out in 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression when kids probably had some darned good reasons to pout and cry.
The song goes on to describe how Santa is making a list of who’s naughty or nice. And if that’s not enough to keep you looking over your shoulder, “he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake.” Geeze. What a creep!
Sure, they may have had Scary Santa back in 1934, but at least they didn’t have TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned entertainment and surveillance app. When Gov. Kim Reynolds announced recently that TikTok was to be banned on all state-owned devices, I assumed this was only her latest assault on Iowans’ lifestyle, which has included encouraging everyone in the state to acquire Covid and a concealed weapon.
Reynolds issued a statement explaining her action. “It is clear,” she wrote, “that TikTok represents a national security risk to our country and I refuse to subject the citizens of Iowa to that risk.” The governor also indicated that she does not consider nurses to be educated and declared that henceforth Iowans will drive on the left side of the road to confuse the deer on Highway 1. (I made up that last part).
Apparently Covid Kim isn’t the only one concerned about TikTok. Recently the US Senate unanimously approved a measure to ban the app on all government devices. I know, the words “Senate” and “unanimous” don’t go together, but it just illustrates that TikTok is a genuine threat and not like another dire warning about the invasion of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers that the Chinese video-sharing app, with over a billion monthly users worldwide, poses a danger to the US because “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.” In other words, TikTok is spying on us.
In researching this story, I clicked on an article by the Financial Times. But in order to access the article, it required me to let them collect “cookies”, bits of data, permitting the publication to track my identify, Web browsing habits and buying behavior before it allowed me to learn about those sneaky TikTokers. I could have refused, of course, but it was easier to surrender to the monstrous data vacuum. It’s like those so-called “privacy policy statements” we have to sign off on before we can get into our bank records or Amazon account. And, rather than actually read the 50 pages of legalese, we sign it and move on. (And those little cameras on your computer and your phone can record you and you won’t even know it.)
The cold truth is, we have no Internet privacy—not from TikTok and not from the Wal-Mart website, not from anything on the Web. The Internet is basically 1934 Santa Claus—it sees you when you’re sleeping—it knows when you’re awake. It knows if you’ve been bad or good—so be good for goodness sake. And not just because they’re watching you.