On March 13, 2024, The House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress voted to outlaw the distribution of all “foreign-adversary-controlled applications.” Although the bill that passed the House could have far reaching implications for numerous applications, the debate was centered around one—TikTok. The impact would mean a change for 170 million American TikTok users that spend an average of 56 minutes per day logged on to the application.
About TikTok: TikTok is a social media based application that records the user’s likes and dislikes based upon their preferences in choosing which pictures and videos to view. Like other social media applications this information winds up in the hands of advertisers trying to reach consumers. TikTok is a wholly owned subsidiary of ByteDance, a publicly held tech company based in Beijing, China. Although the ByteDance management has sought to reassure all governments worldwide that the Chinese Communist Party does not exert any influence in TikTok’s content, the avenue for such abuses does appear to be open. There is room for disinformation campaigns and outright propaganda to be distributed, for example to influence a presidential election. The Central Intelligence Agency in 2020 indicated that although TikTok could provide user information to the Chinese government, so far there was no evidence of that happening. Nonetheless, the U.S. Army and Navy banned TikTok from all government devices in January, 2020. Other governments both domestic and foreign have similar bans.
Congress Moves Towards a Ban: The vote in the House of Representatives was 352 in favor of passage versus 65 opposed with 18 abstentions. The vote crossed party lines with both Republicans and Democrats voting in large numbers for the measure. The bill now heads for the U.S. Senate where the 100 votes are almost equally distributed between the two major parties. The timing of the debate and vote in the Senate is not clear and further clouded by the upcoming November presidential election. Assuming that the Senate did vote for the ban, the measure next would be sent to President Joe Biden for his signature. President Biden has said that he would sign the bill into law if it is presented to him. Even if the bill were to become law, it would face an uncertain future in the court system as ByteDance would seemingly attempt to salvage what it could by filing a lawsuit that might be centered around freedom of speech. Such legal activity could take months or years to resolve.
Who Benefits from a Ban: The largest beneficiaries of the ban would clearly be Meta and Google, two other major social media providers that compete in the same arena for consumer information. Meta has a similar application in Instagram. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, owns several applications that collect consumer information. Research firms have reported that about 82% of TikTok users worldwide also use Meta’s, Facebook, and about 80% use Instagram. Roughly 78% of worldwide TikTok users also use Alphabet’s popular app, YouTube. These ratios decline significantly with X (formerly Twitter) at 53%, and Snapchat, a messaging application, at 35%. If the TikTok ban becomes law and survives the court system challenges, these other applications could reap a potential windfall of nearly 3.5 trillion minutes of usage annually by American consumers.
Alternatives to an Outright Ban: One way to satisfy the requirements of the House version of the ban would be for ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok to a tech company that does not qualify as a “foreign-adversary-controlled” entity. This may be easier said than done, as China’s government might move to block the sale. ByteDance operates TikTok in China by way of another subsidiary named Douyin, but the government might take umbrage on the sale of the American subsidiary to another American company. In addition to the loss of revenue, ByteDance would also lose control over the source code that makes TikTok tick. The TikTok subsidiary is based in Singapore and Los Angeles, California, and not in China itself. Even if the Chinese government were to allow a divestiture, it is not a sure thing that Meta or Alphabet would be in a position to buy it outright owing to antitrust obstacles. Other tech companies, such as Microsoft or Amazon, might be able to put together enough capital to buy TikTok and evade antitrust problems, or a spun-off subsidiary could try an IPO to bring in brigades of private investors. No matter how a divestiture would take place, the new company would be forced to restock its programming staff to replace the founders of the source code that work for ByteDance in Beijing. It would be doubtful that the Chinese government would allow the talented programmers who developed TikTok to leave China to work for a new TikTok company in a new environment elsewhere.
Are the Risks Real or Only Perceived: In that the debate centered around TikTok, it would seem as though the legislation was aimed directly at China. The fears that congress is dealing with by outlawing TikTok may be unfounded. The intentions of many of the representatives voting for the ban could be owing to the upcoming U.S. election as all members of the House of Representatives must face re-election every two years. The TikTok vote would be a good noise-maker during the upcoming campaign that could somehow translate into a form of patriotism on the representative’s part to certain voters. If the risks of the American social media user community being influenced by the Chinese Communist government are real, then it would be up to TikTok’s management to install safeguards that would curb such influence by providing editors and editing software to review its content for dangerous, false, or misleading information. If the risks were proven to jeopardize or compromise national security, then the government should take steps to regulate TikTok’s content. There may already be laws that require this of all social media providers, and if not, then perhaps there should be. Should these efforts fail to mitigate national security risk, then an outright ban would be warranted.
Conclusions: To ban TikTok or any other social media company from operating in the U.S. under this legislation, the government would need to show exactly how the application is providing false or misleading information or propaganda to sway the American public or jeopardize national security. Further, it would need to prove or show cause that China is a foreign adversary and that it exerts control over TikTok. Proving either action in a courtroom, might turn out to be very expensive and extremely difficult if not impossible.
Sources: Tick, tock, The Economist, March 16, 2024.
Wikipedia, TikTok.
Photo by Nikuga
Thank you for a most informative article on TikTok. Personally I agree that regulation rather than banning seems the better way to handle the potential or perceived problem.
Banning TikTok, which offers rewards to American social media providers just seems wrong.