Welcome to Nonrival, the newsletter where readers make predictions.

In this issue

Today is something completely new. Normally, Nonrival asks for predictions about what is going to happen. Today, we're experimenting with asking what should happen. On Sunday, you dove into the topic of a potential US TikTok ban. Today, Nonrival is asking you to evaluate the argument for such a ban.

(The normal forecasting results email will come later this week.)

Send feedback to newsletter@nonrival.pub.

The case for banning TikTok

Political analyst Ian Bremmer laid out the cases for and against very clearly. Nonrival has included an abbreviated version of the case for a ban below. Click a link at the bottom to give your opinion on the argument.

Premises

1. "TikTok answers to the Chinese Communist Party... Chinese private-sector companies may be nominally autonomous from the government, but when it comes to national security, they are mere arms of the CCP."
2. "In practice, this means Beijing could weaponize the inordinate amount of user data collected by TikTok (including location and browsing data) to spy on American citizens."
3. "Beijing could also commandeer TikTok’s algorithm to push disinformation."
4. "While the remedies proposed by ByteDance — such as having a US company handle all US data and committing to adhere to strict privacy and security practices in the US — may solve the data protection issue, nothing short of an outright ban can mitigate the malign influence challenge."

Conclusion

• Therefore, the US should ban TikTok.

Do you agree or disagree?

The US should ban TikTok...

• ​Strongly agree​
• ​Agree​
• ​Uncertain​
• ​Disagree​
• ​Strongly disagree​