The US Speeds Toward a Nationwide TikTok Ban

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:

• Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation to advance a TikTok ban in the United States.

• The bill is expected to face more challenges in the Senate, but still pass. President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law.

• To date, the U.S. government has not provided any evidence that the Chinese-owned TikTok poses an actual threat to national security, and in 2020, similar legislation was ruled unconstitutional by the courts for the evidence being insufficient to outweigh free speech.

Yesterday, the United States House of Representatives voted 352-65 to pass an outright, nationwide TikTok ban. It’s presumed to pass the Senate, and President Joe Biden has said he would sign it into law.

A lot of questions come up with such a bill. Let me go through a couple of them now before I get to my take on the current situation.

What’s the Problem with TikTok? Why Do Politicians Want to Ban It?

The alleged problem with TikTok is that its parent company, ByteDance, is located in China. It is alleged that China, being a Communist country, exerts significant control over businesses that operate there. The fear is that the Chinese government would force ByteDance to misuse user data and/or allow political/government interference in information spread on the app.

Wait, Hasn’t Facebook Actually Done All of That?

Yes, everything politicians are afraid of TikTok potentially doing are things Facebook/Meta has actually done. This tells you everything you need to know about the xenophobic aspect of this argument, as well as how the United States is upset they don’t own or control one of the most popular apps in the country.

I say potentially, because to date no politician has provided evidence TikTok is actually doing anything nefarious. I understand the need for top-secret information, obviously, but trying to convince hundreds of millions of users the app is bad for the country is going to need some proof to do so.

Didn’t President Donald Trump try this in 2020?

He did, and he failed then. That’s what gives me hope the same fate would meet this new attempt. Trump tried this via Executive Order instead of congressional legislation, but I don’t think it will matter too much. His EO was ruled unconstitutional back in 2020, not because of what it said about TikTok, but because of a different Chinese-owned app: WeChat. WeChat is a mobile messaging app similar to WhatsApp, and it is heavily used by Chinese individuals in the U.S. to communicate with family back home. The court ruled the EO infringed on a major diaspora community’s First Amendment right to communicate.

When the WeChat provision was ruled unconstitutional, the TikTok provision sputtered out. This came after TikTok sued, also on the grounds of the First Amendment, but also under the Fifth Amendment for illegal seizure of property. What this meant was that a TikTok ban would prevent the company from paying their employees fair wages, salaries, or even severance, and it was ruled illegal in terms of fair business practices.

Furthermore, the evidence presented to the courts by the government was deemed insufficient in terms of weighing national security and free speech. In other words, the government did not present enough evidence that the threat to national security outweighed Americans’ right to free speech.

Was This A Ban or A Sale Back Then?

Ideally, a sale. That’s what happened in Trump’s Executive Order, and it is what’s on the table now. This would require TikTok to divest from ByteDance and find a new American parent company. TikTok said absolutely not last time. They felt the case would be a “smash and grab” with the app sold for parts. They would most likely refuse again this time.

Didn’t Donald Trump Come Out This Week Against A TikTok Ban?

Yes, after he had dinner with a ByteDance mega-donor.

Isn’t it Hypocritical for the Biden Administration to Use TikTok for Campaigning While Trying to Ban It?

Yes. Biden also revoked Trump’s defunct executive orders in 2021.

If You’re Wrong, And This Isn’t Ruled Unconstitutional, and TikTok Doesn’t Divest, What Happens?

TikTok won’t simply disappear off your phone overnight. New downloads in phone app stores would stop, and the app would lose its ability to run updates. Eventually, it would become unusable as phones continue to update.

What is Project Texas?

Project Texas was TikTok’s multi-billion dollar initiative to prove the app is safe from foreign government interference. It was a massive corporate restructuring that established a strong data and security committee within TikTok and transferred all TikTok data to servers housed on U.S. soil.

Now, don’t get me wrong - TikTok has done some shady things and used some semantic distinctions to justify what it does and doesn’t share with parent company ByteDance in China. But at present, given the fact that again, no evidence of inappropriate data sharing in the name of national security has been offered up, it’s the wrong thing to focus on. Instead, we should all be concerned by an attempt by the U.S. government to ban a major media company.

Wait, so Most TikTok Data Aren’t Even In China? Why the Fuss?

What Do You Think About All of This?

A TikTok ban would be catastrophic to the U.S. economy, entertainment, and information ecosystems. TikTok has over 150 million users in the United States; it has become a major source of news and search for users; the average TikTok user spends close to an hour on the app every day.

The creator economy, of which TikTok is a part, is a $250 billion industry. The people we follow on TikTok provide us with information and entertainment, perform extensive labor to craft videos, build business partnerships, and manage fans and followers. This year, I’ve been teaching a social media storytelling (re: how to be a content creator) class at the University of Alabama, and content creation is work. It requires technical skills, knowledge, and awareness.

Millions of individuals would lose their livelihoods with such a ban. It’s not as simple as pivoting to new platforms, as even short-form video competitors require nuance and specific strategies for the platform in question. Creators would lose their built-in fan bases on TikTok, and it’s not as simple as migrating followers to a new platform.

Marketers looking to use TikTok to reach international audiences will no longer be able to do so. Researchers, like myself, who study communication, will no longer be able to conduct cutting-edge scholarship and be a step behind countries that can. And it’s not as simple as trying to get a VPN and circumventing the laws - state TikTok bans have legal repercussions ranging from hefty tens of thousands of dollars in fines to prison time.

But to me, the biggest point of contention is the lack of good faith, education, and comprehension involved in the decision.

Do you really expect me to believe that the same politicians who make complete fools out of themselves every time tech CEOs come before Congress can make savvy and informed decisions about the state of cybersecurity in America? Do you really expect me to believe the same representatives who don’t understand how WiFi works comprehend what’s presented to them in their closed-door tech security briefings? Do I believe that leads to educated and informed policy voting?

I don’t, and I never will.

Furthermore, this is political suicide for a democratic party already struggling with young voters. Listen, I’m aware that avoiding a second Trump presidency should be enough. But the Bo Burnham song always rings true - how is the best-case scenario Joe Biden?

Student loan repayments restarted under Biden. Roe was overturned and not codified under Biden. The U.S government is bankrolling genocide in Gaza. And before you say, “Biden didn’t have control over some of that!”, I invite you to consider how optics and feelings work in politics - they’re more powerful drivers than fact, unfortunately.

All of this to say, Biden’s popularity with young voters is waning. Being the president who tries to ban TikTok this close to a federal election is not the smartest move. Young voters won’t vote for Trump; they’ll just stay home - but that’s good enough to get us a second Trump presidency.

It’s almost important to note that if the U.S. had passed any meaningful data security laws for social media in the last twenty years, we wouldn’t be in this situation. But the U.S. lags behind other countries in terms of data security, and if we had taken steps to mitigate this earlier on, the alleged Chinese government threat wouldn’t be as serious. As I’ve said for years - we should regulate TikTok. But we should regulate everyone else too.

The TikTok ban legislation represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how social media, technology, cybersecurity, and global politics function. It will be catastrophic to millions of Americans, and sadly, the government doesn’t seem to care.

📚 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

• Donald Trump slams Meta as “the enemy of the people.” (BBC).

• World’s first major attempt to regulate AI is passed by European lawmakers. (CNBC).

• Telegram gears up for stock market flotation (Financial Times).

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