The TikTok Ban Is Backfiring Spectacularly

January 19, 2025– I love it when a stupid plan falls apart. I love it even more when a stupid, asinine, unconstitutional plan, crafted by and for special interest groups and sold to the American people with a pack of lies, gaslighting and fear mongering by our Cash & Carry Congress backfires spectacularly.

That’s exactly what the TikTok ban is doing.

TikTok is now officially banned in these United States, contrary to the wishes of 170 million Americans. The app went down Saturday night, and regardless of what President Trump does in the next few days, those Americans are NOT happy to lose access to the app. A lot of the rest of us aren’t pleased, either, because it’s a hideous overreach by the government in service of censorship on behalf of special interests, not the people.

Early last week, as the ban loomed, a community of #TikTokrefugees sprang up, laying plans to keep posting should the Biden White House fail to act (which they did). However, to everyone’s surprise, they didn’t migrate to X, or YouTube, or Instagram. They went to Xaiohongshu, a Chinese app whose name translates as “Little Red Book.”

Yes, that’s right—just like Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Red Book quickly soared to the #1 spot on the App Store, and I’m told it did the same on the Google play store.

All this week, Chinese users of Red Book have been opening the app to find millions of American TikTok refugees stumbling their way through the interface (it’s in Chinese, not English) and saying “hello.” Once they got over their shock and confusion, the vast majority of the Chinese have reportedly been kind, helpful and welcoming. Offers to swap Mandarin lessons for help with English homework have exploded. Conversations between those Chinese who speak English and Americans who speak Chinese are blossoming, and translation apps are getting an epic workout. Go to YouTube, search “Red Book” and you’ll see scads of videos about this.

Americans and Chinese are talking directly, and it’s driving our Glorious Leaders and Deep State apparatchiks out of their (alleged) minds! Sen. Tom Cotton, speaking on the Senate floor, said, “TikTok is a Chinese communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist propaganda.” As opposed to what, Senator? A U.S. government-coerced spy app that harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content (“safe and effective,” “don’t take horse dewormer”) and spreads Fauci- and CDC-approved propaganda?

Two words, Tom: Face. Book.

Two more words, Tom: Twitter. Files.

For the record, Sen. Cotton voted to reauthorize FISA, including Section 702. According to TrackAIPAC.com, the good Senator has received $237,239 from the pro-Israel lobby. Unfortunately, there’s not one good place to go to find all the Big Tech money Congress gets, and digging it out of the web of PACs, dark money and the FEC site is a true pain, so I’m not sure exactly how much Big Tech money, if any, he’s pulled in.

Here’s what makes the irony of Red Book so delicious: millions of (mostly young) Americans are voluntarily joining a Chinese app, knowing that it’s a Chinese data miner—and they’re doing it as an act of defiance against the U.S. government! They know they’re giving their data to the ChiComs, and they don’t care. The vast majority of them know their own government is spying on them at every turn. They also have essentially no trust in that government after years of in-your-face lies about COVID.

Best of all? Our Glorious Leaders caused this by their ham-handed, special interest-appeasing censorship of an app that’s largely pure fluff, with a little substance thrown in. They’ve driven an angry, disaffected demographic right into the arms of “the enemy” and let the two peoples talk directly, bypassing the official propaganda lines.

Guess what? They like each other. They’re having a blast.

All those billions spent by America to push the “China is evil, because it censors and oppresses its people” line? Wasted. U.S. government credibility? Shredded.

And Congress has no one to blame but themselves…and the lobbyists and AIPAC Buddies they listened to, over their constituents.

Was TikTok perfect? Of course not. Will it be perfect when it comes back, as seems likely? Nope. Could it be easily fixed? Yep. Tweak the algorithm to mimic the actual Chinese version—strict time limits for kids, mandatory history/civics/science/math content appropriate for age (the good stuff, not wokey 1619 crap), few other things; it’d take about two hours to rough out, couple of weeks to implement, couple of weeks to code, done. I did rocket science back in the day, this ain’t it. Keep the data here, lock it down, keep everybody’s prying eyes out without a real warrant (not one of those FISA rubber stamps), couple of MAGAmericans on the Board, call it good and leave it alone.

But that won’t happen. It won’t assuage the egos of our embarrassed Congress. It won’t satisfy the special interests who wanted TikTok banned. No, they’ll collude to screw things up even further, and try to gaslight us about how good their new fix is—just like they did the first time. It won’t work, but who knows what kind of new backfire they’ll cause.

In the meantime, Americans and Chinese people are talking, sharing and laughing together. I won’t say it’s been perfect—some of the LGBTQ+ crowd are upset that China don’t play that, and will ban you. Red Book only has two gender choices. You can’t post silly memes about Xi Jinping, and in general, political topics are to be avoided. But, Americans are flabbergasted by how nice China looks, compared to America’s blue-run hell holes. Americans are also shocked at how inexpensive China’s food and healthcare is—and Luigi is a cult hero over there.

Before you ask; no. I’m not on Red Book. I did get a TikTok account right before it got banned, like Rand Paul did, for the same reason—we both hate censorship, and it’s a protest move. But who knows? Since it’s assured that the CCP is monitoring Red Book, maybe this is my chance to finally meet my own personal Chinese spy!

Until then, I guess I’ll just have to stick to my regular social media and Substack, DocContrarian.Substack.com, where I’ll put all the links for this piece.

Dr. Bill Chitwood is a retired Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist who does political consulting and media relations. He is the author of Beyond Maga, available on Amazon under his pen name, Doc Contrarian. He can be found on Substack and social media as @DocContrarian.

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