Russell Lee: Shadows on the snow in the mountains in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. The unusual crescent shaped light in patches in the shadows were caused by the eclipse of the sun (04/1940)
United States. Farm Security Administration (Sponsor)

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Shadows on the snow in the mountains in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. The unusual crescent shaped light in patches in the shadows were caused by the eclipse of the sun" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 15, 2026. (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ba84e0f0-4993-0137-010c-2971ff3091f6)

"We have become our own foreign adversary now."

Scrolling has seemingly suddenly taken an historically outsized role in current affairs. Hardly a newspaper can be published without some story harkening into some aspect of social media. Our president uses his own private social media platform as the primary conduit for disseminating government information. True to its social media nature, much of that information amounts to deliberate mis- and disinformation. In 2024, Congress passed, and President Biden signed into law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA). It was intended to address national security concerns regarding TikTok’s ownership by the Chinese company ByteDance. The act identified some critical risks that they insisted necessitated a forced sale or ban of the platform.

Congress feared that the Chinese government might employ its national intelligence laws to compel ByteDance to share so-called sensitive personal data of more than 170 million American users, including location and biometric identifiers. Congress and the Biden administration also expressed concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could covertly manipulate TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm to suppress dissent, spread disinformation, or influence American public opinion, particularly during election cycles. The move was seen as being part of a broader “tech war” and ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China, with officials arguing that a platform with such massive influence should not be controlled by a “foreign adversary”. Some legislators cited more immediate concerns, such as the alleged promotion of pro-Hamas propaganda and anti-Israel bias on the platform during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

It’s rare that so many issues converge beneath a single umbrella issue. The law required ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations to a non-adversarial owner within roughly nine months (by January 19, 2025) or face a ban from U.S. app stores and web hosting services. The ban did not penalize individual users; instead, it targeted third-party companies like Apple, Google, and cloud providers, making it illegal for them to distribute or maintain the app. Notice how the app remains widely available. TikTok appealed to the Supreme Court, which, in January 2025, upheld the law as passed. However, executive actions and a restructuring deal significantly altered the implementation of this law. In early 2026, TikTok finalized a deal to restructure into a new majority American-owned joint venture (TikTok USDS Joint Venture) involving investors like Oracle to avoid a permanent nationwide ban. Enforcement was repeatedly delayed by executive orders from the Trump administration to allow for these negotiations. You might remember how TikTok’s chairman was invited onto the dias during Trump’s inauguration and also how he subsequently visited Mar-A-Lago. Is anyone any safer?

Arguably, the current administration’s approval of a restructured TikTok changed nothing. Its product seems even more popular than it was back when Congress deemed it a danger. Its videos found expanded distribution. As of early 2026, TikTok is projected to grow its user base by 17%, with an average daily use time of just under an hour per user, up from just under thirty minutes in 2019. Data must probably be available in whatever form an interested party might require. It is, after all, the most downloaded app in the world. I suspect there’s no practicable means for controlling either its use or its reach, other than individual choice, if individual choice even exists anymore. A compunction seems to have overridden a once somewhat-reliable governor on such systems. People might have once experienced occasional obsession, but not such widespread addiction-quality distraction. The age of mass distraction has overtaken us.

It can’t be a coincidence that so many are litigating against so many social media firms. Such UnusualConvergences suggest a genuine sea change. We cannot maintain innocence or inadvertent guilt in the face of such overwhelming experience. What was once perhaps an inadvertent attraction must come into question as the information repeatedly floods the headlines. I’ve become more aware of what I once hardly noticed. I actively seek alternatives instead of simply succumbing to these strange attractions. A better life might even exist in a world beyond continual TikTok videos. If the Chinese, or anybody, wants to overwhelm the culture, they need not invade. If they just stand back, we’re fully capable of invading and undermining ourselves by merely obsessing over something as trivial as TikTok videos, whoever owns the underlying platform. We have become our own foreign adversary now.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Unscrolling, #PureSchmaltz