Frankenstein Politics: Facebook’s Anti-China Campaign Spins Out of Its Control

After months of anti-TikTok rhetoric, Facebook had second thoughts when its rival faced a ban

Standing in front of a packed Georgetown auditorium last October, Mark Zuckerberg took his TikTok criticism to a crescendo. Activists around the world, he said, were organizing on Facebook-owned WhatsApp, while TikTok — “the Chinese app” — was censoring them.

Zuckerberg, in his comparison, drew a line between two competing visions for the internet. One, …