BTW: The US Just Banned TikTok

Welcome to BTW, a newsletter on all things Internet culture and technology. Here, I discuss an in-depth issue or trend in social media or the tech industry with my eye on what you need to know to be informed on the matter.

⏰ TL;DR:

• President Biden has just signed a bill into law that will ban TikTok in the United States.

• Politicians are calling this a divestment, but make no mistakes - it’s a ban.

• The law will have catastrophic implications for the U.S. economy and the lives of millions of creators and small businesses.

Last night, the U.S. Senate approved a foreign financial aid package that included support for Ukraine and Israel, and inside the bill was a provision banning TikTok in the United States.

You may recall that a few weeks back, I wrote about the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted to ban the short-form video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Back then, I wrote that the bill was likely to face challenges in the Senate, and that did seem to be the case. The bill died in the Senate - so how did we get back here?

The House insidiously returned to the drawing board, and changed the bill from a standalone piece of legislation to being tucked inside a foreign aid package that would be difficult to vote against. The Senate did just that, and passed it.

And as I write this, President Biden has just signed the bill into law. (*edits post title from “The U.S. is about to ban TikTok” to “the U.S. just banned TikTok*).

So What Happens Now?

I won’t repeat everything I wrote in my last post about this matter, but no, TikTok is not disappearing off of your phone today. I expect by the time this newsletter hits your inbox TikTok will have filed a lawsuit against the bill, and based on precedent of what happened when former President Trump tried to ban the app, the law will be ruled unconstitutional.

But, I’m aware that might not happen. I’m confident it will, but things could have changed since we last did this in 2020.

You Keep Calling This A Ban, But It’s Actually a Divestment. Are You An Idiot?

When it comes to math and keeping plants alive, yes. But here, no.

The law is a divestment, which would force TikTok to be sold away from its Chinese parent company of ByteDance. Again, I wrote in my last post about the xenophobia and Sinophobia at work here, as well as the fact that to date the U.S. government has not provided any meaningful evidence that TikTok is providing U.S.user data to China. This was one of the reasons former President Trump’s executive order requiring a divestment was ruled unconstitutional in 2020.

Back in 2020, TikTok said in no uncertain terms that they would not divest. A divestment would result in a “smash-and-grab” for parts, in which American social media companies would grab pieces of the app to incorporate into their own platforms. There was also discussion that they would not sell off their proprietary #FYP (For You Page) algorithm, that makes the app so lucrative in the first place. And, just so you’re aware, the most interested party to purchase pieces of TikTok last time was Microsoft. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know want the people who created and manage Teams to be anywhere in charge of my video apps.

This is why I call it a ban. Even if this law is ruled constitutional, TikTok is unlikely to sell. That means, eventually, no more TikTok. The term “divestment” is merely clever word play to get you to not think about the fact that U.S. is banning a major media company from operating on its soil.

A common counterargument here is that there have always been laws that require U.S. media to be no more than 25% foreign owned. Notably, this law was written for, and has historically applied to, organizations like news companies.

TikTok, and social media in general, have changed what it means to be a media company. While many tech CEOs long eschewed the idea that they were media companies, they’ve begun to reluctantly admit it. However, there are two things two think about here - one, existing media laws have not caught up with the modern state of social media. Two, TikTok has become so engrained in the fabric of American life that yanking it out will leave a gaping crater, and I don’t think politicians have thought through the ramifications of this.

When I write stuff like this I often get emails from strangers accusing me of being a Communist sympathizer, so let me just say this - I’m not advocating for foreign government interference. I’m a pragmatist about the state of the modern entertainment, media, and information landscape. The world wants to “deglobalize” itself, but it’s not as simple as putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

What About Grindr?

No, I haven’t lost the plot. You’re going to hear a lot about the dating app for gay, bisexual, and transgender men over the next few weeks.

Back in 2020, before President Trump’s executive order banning TikTok and other Chinese owned apps, CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, issued Grindr the same ultimatum TikTok now faces. CFIUS is a nine-member interagency panel that reviews questions of whether business transactions between foreign buyers and U.S. entities have national security concerns.

CFIUS became concerned with Grindr when they learned the Beijing-based Kunlun Tech had not notified the U.S. of their purchase of the app in 2018. The panel’s primary concern was that the Chinese government could compel Kunlun Tech to hand over user data that could be user to blackmail American government officials.

The concerns ended in 2020 when Kunlun Tech divested Grindr and sold it to the U.S.-based San Vicente Acquisition.

But Grindr Had to Divest. Won’t TikTok?

I want to begin this section by saying business law is well outside of my field of expertise. So I’m going to tackle this section carefully, and I’ll begin by stating there are major differences between dating apps and media apps.

Media apps will always fall under First Amendment considerations in a way dating apps won’t. Again, this was the issue back in 2020, when the courts ruled the government had presented an insufficient amount of data on national security concerns. To them, this did not outweigh free speech concerns.

And while yes, dating apps are a form of media, they are used in communication in a fundamentally different way than TikTok. So, keep this in mind as we move forward.

President Biden is Currently Really Unpopular With Young People. Why is He Doing This?

What Are Your Thoughts On This?

A ban by any other name is still a ban. Requiring a media company be split up for parts is a huge ask for one of the most popular apps in the United States and in the world. This power move should concern everyone, regardless of their personal feelings about TikTok.

As I always say when this issue comes up, the real issue is that the United States has no meaningful data security and regulation protections. If we did, this wouldn’t be half of the problem it is. As I’ve stated before, everything we are concerned with TikTok potentially doing, U.S. social media have actually done.

Taking a step back from the politics of it all, this law is catastrophic to the millions of creators and small businesses who use TikTok to reach their target audiences and earn their livelihoods.

The social media, content creation, and influencer market cap in the United States is staggering. There are more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, and TikTok boasts more than 150 million active monthly users in the United States alone. Instagram users watch 17.6 million hours of Reels per day, and the global live streaming market cap alone was $1.49 billion in 2023. The social media content creation industry had a market cap of $27.1 billion in 2023, and before today, it was on track to be worth over $90.4 billion in 2033.

I say before today, because a TikTok ban will ruin the livelihoods of millions of creators on the app. I teach a content creation class at the University of Alabama, and making content for different platforms is not as simple as just pivoting or re-uploading content from another site. Every platform has specifics, genres, and norms to adhere to. Every platform has its own creator interface to learn. And if someone has their primary audience on TikTok, getting those people to follow them to a new platform and rebuild their brand elsewhere will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

For businesses, TikTok has become a way to reach audiences. It has been an invaluable tool for local businesses to reach folks in their communities. Even for larger corporations, TikTok allows them to reach global consumers. If it’s banned in the United States, sure, they’ll still have other platforms, but a giant pipeline will be severed.

This ban is a ban, and it is emblematic of larger political deglobalization problems. After connecting across the world, countries now want to retreat back to their separate corners. But it’s not that easy. Furthermore, the United States has dominated the social media landscape for twenty years, and now they’re simply not used to sharing.

📚 Academic Readings to Learn More

• Anilesh Kumar & Daya Thussu (2023), “Media, Digital Sovereignty and Geopolitics: The Case of the TikTok Ban in India.”

• Ausma Bernot, Diarmuid Cooney-O’Donoghue, & Monique Mann (2024), “Governing Chinese Technologies: TikTok, Foreign Interference, and Technological Sovereignty”

• Lianrui Jia & Fan Liang (2021), “The Globalization of TikTok: Strategies, Governance, and Geopolitics.”

👀 Things I’m Keeping My Eye On This Week

• You’ve probably been encouraged to start using Meta AI - but what if you don’t want to? (Fast Company).

• Meta’s Threads now has more daily US users than X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. (Business Insider).

• My home state of Georgia is the latest state to try to ban social media for children under sixteen. (The Savannah Morning News).