I do find people's faith in Democracy, as opposed to Authoritarianism, somewhat exasperating. Two candidates, pre-selected by the powers that be to lead the nation, compete in inane televised debates, wave flags and make promises that everyone knows they are going to break. This everyone debates hotly, and then lines up to register one bit of Holy Democratic Choice, to be averaged with a hundred million similar bits to determine, by a margin of a few percent, the one and only legitimate Government of the People, by the People, for the People. My Ass.
In the end, "democracy" is about power and control, just like any other form of government, and the TikTok ban is just another power-play, however it may be justified publicly. Not that I'm overly sorry to see it banned, by the way :)
Until very recently, "Democracy" was a dirty way to describe a government. It was in the same class of failed government models as tyranny, the rule of the mindless mob.
Maybe, but my point is that democracy is not even the rule of a mindless mob, more like mob rule theater. Ruling implies receiving information and performing complex actions and giving many and nontrivial orders. From a purely information-theoretical perspective, it requires a lot of entropy flowing from the decision maker to subordinates. On the other hand, national elections collect a tiny pool of entropy from the supposed root source of power and legitimacy, the people. This is not enough to rule a country, by many orders of magnitude. The country is instead ruled by ambitious individuals, who seize power in various ways - connections, backroom deals, backstabbing. Some participate in the election theater.
In the end, "democracy" is about power and control, just like any other form of government, and the TikTok ban is just another power-play, however it may be justified publicly. Not that I'm overly sorry to see it banned, by the way :)