I’m no fan of TikTok. But I’m with Tyler here that a government-imposed ban is the wrong prescription. Naturally, our government’s approach is to attempt to grant the central government more authority to do things very very not limited to TikTok-banning.

Should it really be possible that you could get 20 years in prison for using a VPN to bypass such a ban? 20 years behind bars is unlikely, but more broadly this is a sign that we are addressing the TikTok problems with very much the wrong policy instruments.

I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s possible there is no easy single-swing solution. But “it’s complicated” isn’t an argument that regulatory technocrats like to hear.