Digital imperialism in the US has direct implications on Global South economies

We had seen it coming. The United States — which projects itself as the torchbearer of “free speech” around the world — has set another dangerous precedent by finally approving a regressive piece of legislation targeting the short-video platform, TikTok. The law, titled “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”, under the guise of “state security” concerns, demands TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, sell its US operations within less than a year or face a permanent ban in the country. The measure could result in around 170 million users in the US losing access to a global platform that has enabled them to exercise their right to free speech as well as helped them carve out lucrative careers.

What warrants deeper concern here, however, is the implications of such a law in countries in the Global South which, for many odd reasons, see the US as an example of a perfect society. I, for one, can speak for Pakistan where I’m from and have seen this happen frequently. This new law has provided the Pakistani government, which has formed into an authoritarian regime over the last few years, with yet another excuse to justify censorship and internet shutdowns which, unfortunately, have become an integral part of the state’s strategies to crack down on dissenting voices. Just days before the bill targeting TikTok was approved by the US Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar tried to justify the prolonged ban on Twitter (now X) in the country by bringing up the example of the roundly condemned legislation.

Digital imperialism and threats to free speech

According to Sadaf Khan, a tech accountability expert and co-founder of Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD), a digital rights and media development nonprofit based in Pakistan, the US is using the same argument to justify its ban on TikTok that the Pakistani government has put forth so far in response to the prolonged blockage of X in the country.

She said, “The First Amendment [in the US] has always been a part and parcel of how the US projects itself within the human rights circles. And while their actions have been quite opposed to the spirit of the Amendment for quite a while, the TikTok ban, I think, is for the first time very clearly laid out in so many words that they are trying to control the narratives.”

It’s a very in-your-face digital imperialist approach.

For arbitrary platform takedowns in Pakistan, Khan believes that Pakistan has the tendency to bank on the behaviour of other states to justify its own actions. “It’s a very in-your-face digital imperialist approach,” Khan said.

Shedding light on the far-reaching implications of the ban, Daron Tan, associate legal adviser for the Asia and the Pacific Programme at the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), raised concerns about how it could jeopardise the freedom of expression on the internet in other states.

“The regulation of all social media companies should focus on demanding greater transparency and accountability,” Tan said. “The ban on TikTok also risks emboldening authoritarian regimes to continue pursuing and justifying similar bans on disfavoured social media platforms based on overly expansive interpretations of ‘national security’, causing reverberations on the exercise of free expression and internet freedom beyond the United States.”

The US appears particularly concerned about its forthcoming general elections which, it claims, could be manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by forcefully obtaining sensitive user data of the US citizens from ByteDance. But leading tech conglomerates, especially Meta and Google, are routinely fined for violations of consumer rights, including unlawfully mining data from social media accounts belonging to minors and tracking browsing activity of users despite promising them otherwise. That is not to say, however, that TikTok hasn’t been found engaging in violative practices; it has been penalised and taken to court over child safety failures, consent violations, and misuse of user data, too.

But if these concerns around elections really persist from a foreign social media platform, one does not need to see beyond Meta to gauge the extent of threats to democracy in its own home country. To date, the biggest controversy around elections involving a tech company in the US rests with Meta itself, when a 2018 investigation revealed that Meta, then known as Facebook, allowed a British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest profiles of 50 million users that helped target ads for Donald Trump’s electoral campaign.

The ban on TikTok also risks emboldening authoritarian regimes to continue pursuing and justifying similar bans on disfavoured social media platforms based on overly expansive interpretations of ‘national security’, causing reverberations on the exercise of free expression and internet freedom beyond the United States.

Digital imperialism in the backdrop of Israeli genocide

While the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza has polarised the internet in an unprecedented manner, it has also revealed the bias embedded deeply in the algorithmic infrastructure of social media platforms owned by powerful tech companies. In October 2023, various Palestinian users complained about Instagram inserting the term “terrorist” into their Instagram bio, which the company ascribed to technical errors, in addition to Meta’s widespread shadow banning of pro-Palestine content on its platforms. Later in November, the advocacy group, 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, published the results of its investigation into the advertisement mechanism at Meta.

The organisation submitted about 19 ads (written in Arabic and Hebrew) calling for violence against the Arabs and Palestinians, which ended up being approved for publication on Facebook. The same month, Meta’s AI sticker generator on WhatsApp showed Palestinian children in possession of firearms in traditional Muslim clothing in response to prompts such as “Muslim boy Palestinian”, “Palestine”, and “Palestinian”. Meta got away with it by pinning the blatant demonisation of Palestinians on technical glitches, again.

TikTok, on the other hand, registered a significant rise in pro-Palestine posts by younger users, especially those condemning Israel for its human rights violations and war crimes across Gaza. As a result, the regulatory glare on TikTok intensified in the US, with several senators calling for an immediate ban against the short-video app and accusing it of bolstering pro-Palestine content, allegations that TikTok vehemently denied. Simultaneously, TikTok faced accusations of suppressing pro-Palestine content, too. 

Nevertheless, where Meta-owned platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram, strategically targeted pro-Palestine content, TikTok did become an avenue for open discourse on the atrocities faced by Gazans. Hence, seeking TikTok’s divestment or a permanent ban lays bare the US’ frustration over its inability to trample pro-Palestine content as it cannot be controlled within the US. 

Interestingly, this echoes what we have been hearing from the Pakistan government and its Ministry of Interior on the continuing ban on X in the country — imposition of a blockage on social media platforms based on threats to national security in vague and sweeping terms with no evidence of these threats produced within or outside of courts whatsoever.

Where Meta-owned platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram, strategically targeted pro-Palestine content, TikTok did become an avenue for open discourse on the atrocities faced by Gazans.

Emboldening state regulators across continents 

Although TikTok has repeatedly rejected any ties with the Chinese government, it continues to be a subject of intense regulatory scrutiny in both the US and European Union (EU), with the latter having banned the platform from official devices. In September 2023, TikTok opened its first data centre in Ireland under an initiative called “Project Clover”, but that appears to have done little to mitigate security concerns in the EU piled up on the app by lawmakers and regulators. Several other countries, including Australia, Denmark, Canada, and New Zealand, have prohibited TikTok from government-issued devices, too. 

In South Asia, on the other hand, internet shutdowns and platform takedowns are conveniently deployed as a weapon to silence dissenting voices; disrupt political mobilisation, including protests; and cut off free flow of real-time information during electoral events. For example, in June 2024, Myanmar blocked access to VPNs, penalising individuals found using proxy applications on their devices. In November 2023, Nepal blocked complete access to TikTok, claiming it disrupted social harmony and promoted “indecent materials”. In February 2023, Bangladesh throttled 191 news websites, which was broadly condemned as a tactic to curb criticism. In April 2022, Sri Lanka choked Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, and other social media platforms during the economic upheaval. The same month, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan pulled the plug on TikTok, accusing it of misleading youth and hosting content that violated “Islamic laws”. India, which was TikTok’s largest market with 200 million users at the time, took down the platform in June 2020 following border skirmishes with China.

The impacts this regressive measure demonstrated on individuals and communities, whom a platform like TikTok enabled to leverage the democratic nature of the internet, have become a paradigmatic example of myopic governmental decisions and their seismic consequences that people are left to grapple with.

In Pakistan, where connectivity blackouts and platforms blockages have assimilated into routine, TikTok faced four major bans between October 2021 and November 2022, but the reason for the blockage, according to the government, was the platform’s failure to take down “immoral” and “indecent” content, and not threats to national security. The moral policing by state regulators in the country — be it the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) or the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) — has long been a focal point of contention between the government and rights advocates. The consecutive bans not only violated people’s right to free expression and information, but inflicted critical damages on the emerging home-grown economic diversity as well.

While that is an entirely different debate, it does reflect liberally on how repressive legislations devised by developed “democratic” states that other countries refer to for lawmaking can embolden regulators that operate on the whims of the governments, especially when officials cite such developments to justify the arbitrary measures imposed in their own countries without any sound or logical explanation.

Pakistan’s long-standing love for censorship, picked from the West

The government of Pakistan, on several occasions, has claimed the incorporation of certain components from international regulatory frameworks in their own legislation. However, these international laws have only been referred to by way of mere formality. The approval of several pieces of electronic media and cyber legislation in July 2023 is an illustrative example of such hazy and furtive referrals, where officials considered their responsibility fulfilled by simply citing examples from the West without actually delving into what exactly the government derived from which international laws, and certainly not consulting with stakeholders regarding the implications of such hasty measures in the local contexts.

Legislative frameworks directly impacting the citizens are largely formulated behind closed doors, with little to no input from experts and rights groups that represent and advocate for people’s fundamental rights, and which are way more cognisant of international regulatory frameworks, their relevance, and shortcomings when applied to Pakistan.

The E-Safety Bill, 2023, and the Data Protection Bill, 2023, for example, had emerged out of the blue, throwing digital rights advocates into a state of alarm. Although the government claimed it had held multiple consultations with stakeholders, rights activists and civil society organisations protested against their exclusion from these claimed consultations. This shows how legislative frameworks directly impacting the citizens are largely formulated behind closed doors, with little to no input from experts and rights groups that represent and advocate for people’s fundamental rights, and which are way more cognisant of international regulatory frameworks, their relevance, and shortcomings when applied to Pakistan.

In addition, the continuing ban on X remains unjustified by the government, which reeks profusely of the festering culture of impunity that state authorities operate with. Instead, the explanation given so far for the ban relies deficiently on reasons linked to “national security”. Ironically, government officials, including the Prime Minister, continue to use the suspended platform via VPNs, and press statements are routinely published on verified X accounts representing ministries. This projects a baffling spectacle of contradiction and refusal to address the actual reason behind the takedown. If a social media platform truly poses threats to national security, why do those in power continue using it? It goes without saying the arbitrary blockage only makes it challenging for people to access the internet which has become a necessity in the 21st century. 

Sheraz*, who works as a sports reporter for an English newspaper in Karachi, told GenderIT that he stopped using X on his personal device completely a few weeks after the platform was suspended. The major reason he cites is the affordability of secure proxy connections.

“I have literally stopped using X since it got banned,” he said. “And I can't afford a VPN subscription to stay connected to the platform 24/7 as much as I want to. It has affected my work and it has made my life difficult as a journalist."

Sheraz takes his digital security seriously and will not opt for “shady” VPNs at any cost, he added.

On the other hand, Saira Baig, a digital investigator and a fact-checker at Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD), said that X’s suspension has affected her on both personal and professional fronts.

“The ban has disrupted my research and communication channels, isolating me from international collaborations and critical information flows which, I believe, are essential for my pursuit of a PhD in International Relations,” said Baig. “Additionally, my work as a fact-checker is heavily reliant on access to X.”

Pakistan’s foreign minister’s comparison of the US’ targeted ban on TikTok with the continuing suspension of X in the country is only the beginning of government officials justifying the prolonged blockage on X, which will soon gallop past five months. It is only a matter of time before we see more such justifications in both Pakistan and beyond now that the “beacon of free speech” has set a regressive precedent by approving a law that enables the government to ban a social media platform that has provided millions of users with a sense of belonging and a voice in the global digital community. The cracks in the US’ ostensible foundational pillars of free speech had already broadened with the overturning of the “Roe v Wade” verdict (ending the right to abortion and, in essence, eroding the fundamental concept of bodily autonomy) and, most recently, its crackdowns on protesters at universities calling for an end to the Israeli genocide in Palestine. But the US’ suppression of a social media platform propelled purely by geopolitical gains is a stark reminder of its imperialist history — albeit in the digital world this time.

*Names have been changed to protect identity.