Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
In a new opinion piece for the New York Times, Tim Wu, Columbia University law professor and outspoken promoter of the free and open internet, writes an interesting defense of President *****’s ban on the Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat in the US. Despite calling ***** “the wrong figure to be fighting this fight,” Wu argues that the threatened bans are “an overdue response, a tit for tat, in a long battle for the soul of the internet.” It’s an interesting counterpoint to the myriad, valid issues that have been raised about the ban, and it’s well worth a read.
Core to Wu’s argument is that China has banned TikTok and WeChat competitors like YouTube and WhatsApp for years. Foreign companies are effectively blocked from fully and…