Here’s a tip for web giants wanting to make sure public policymakers don’t shut them down because they fear they will abuse the power of their platform to exert political influence: don’t use the power of your platform to try to exert political influence.

Such is the lesson learned by TikTok (and, hopefully, others) over the past few days when it encouraged users to call U.S. congressional offices to express their alarm that the popular global social media platform could be evicted from the lucrative American market.