How many times in your life can you say that one of the culture-defining platforms of your era is being forcibly removed? This is what will happen to the one third of American adults who use TikTok – and the other two-thirds whose lives have been undoubtedly affected by it – if the US supreme court upholds its ban on the Chinese-owned app, as it is expected to do on 19 January, in the interests of national security.
I have spent the last few years researching instances of linguicide, where authoritarian regimes have burned dictionaries, or sent people to prison just for singing a song. I see alarming parallels with the dismantling of TikTok in the US; a ruthless cull of a communication tool that challenges Silicon Valley hegemony and gave the US a serving of what it is allegedly supposed to prize: healthy, full-fat competition.
