Are we being cynical enough?

It’s possible that TikTok is terrible. As with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo (yes, it exists again). They are all just ways for humans to communicate and humans in groups can be pretty terrible at times.

But it’s always useful to think a little cynically. After all, the correct question for all adults, when viewing the world around them, is “Am I being cynical enough?”

At which point:

This trend is fuelling concerns that content on apps such as TikTok could drive anti-Semitism and radicalise young users, particularly as conflict in the Middle East drags on.

Some experts believe this could mean countries rue the decision not to shut out TikTok once and for all.

Sam Lessin, a former Facebook executive, says “far too many smart people” ignored the issue of misinformation on TikTok: “And now, a few years later, we are paying for this major misstep.”

TikTok competes with Facebook - or with one or other of their versions like Instagram or something, we can’t recall which. At which point a gentleman with at least an emotional investment in Facebook tells us that TikTok is the very devil which we should have banned.

Oh, right.

Or is that too cynical?

Now that is something that any sentient being can spot, what is being done there. But it’s necessary to go that one step further. As soon as we have a system of governance which takes upon itself the power to ban this or that player in any market then the attentions of every other player will be laser focussed on influencing that government power. As such lobbying (to use a polite word, rapine of the body politic we’d prefer to call it) is by definition zero sum then the activity is societally impoverishing. Effort expended which produces nothing nett just is such, again by definition.

In economic terms at least the problem with such government powers is simply that the effort to influence said powers reduces the common wealth. This is true either of subsidy of certain selected or of the banning of certain selected businesses. The effort that goes into capturing that government influence is a gross loss to us all.

So, don’t have a government with such powers and we shall all be richer. We might even get to the stage where it would be possible to believe the surface message in a news report, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?