US Joins Global Bid to Carve Up the Internet With TikTok Move

The Trump administration’s campaign to make Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok relocate to the US is the latest example of the global fracturing of the internet. Treating user data as a matter of national security is a notion that has dictated many of the policies Beijing has put in place to control the internet in its country for the past decade. China operates what is called the “Great Firewall,” limiting the services people in the country can use and the information they receive. Beijing stops people from accessing services run by Facebook and Google, instead steering them toward Chinese-owned alternatives such as WeChat and Baidu that it controls increasingly tightly. The idea that those data flows need tighter control has spread in recent years, resulting in a number of instances when governments temporarily shut down the internet. Governments have a range of motivations, from squelching internal dissent to protecting their citizens’ privacy.