Rand Paul To GOP: Don’t Copy China By Banning TikTok

Sen. Rand Paul writes for the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Congressional Republicans have come up with a national strategy to permanently lose elections for a generation: Ban a social media app called TikTok that 94 million, primarily young Americans, use.

The banning TikTok strategy also comes while the GOP simultaneously complains of liberal U.S. social media companies canceling and censoring conservatives. So, without a hint of irony, many of these same “conservatives” now agitate to ban a platform owned by an international group that includes several American investors.

So, on the one hand, Republicans complain about censorship, while with the other hand, these same Republicans advocate to censor social media apps that they worry are influenced by the Chinese. Before banning TikTok, these censors might want to discover that China’s government already bans TikTok. Hmmm . . . do we really want to emulate China’s speech bans?

Read the full op-ed.

Rand Paul: Does the US really want to emulate China by banning TikTok? https://t.co/1V5hHOnsM4

— Doug Stafford (@dougstafford) March 29, 2023