TikTok devotees Mona Swain (centre) and her sister Rachel, both of Atlanta, monitor voting at the Capitol in Washington, as the House passed the TikTok bill on March 13. Photo: AP
Opinion
Mohammed Sinan Siyech
Mohammed Sinan Siyech
Fiery debate over TikTok ban puts America’s culture wars in spotlight
Ban supporters cite security concerns, Chinese influence and spread of antisemitic content while critics cite free speech and reject the government’s interference
The debate has stirred fierce feelings, defying the traditional conservative vs liberal divide. Whatever the outcome, there is little hope of pleasing the crowd
A recent US bill to force TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the popular app received rare and overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, thrusting a possible TikTok ban back in the heat of debate. The video-sharing platform has about 180 million US users, around two-thirds of whom are aged 12-34 years.
Politicians have voiced national security concerns over TikTok because of its Chinese ownership. Some commentators have accused TikTok of being a breeding ground for the culture wars that polarise the American public and weaken its democracy, while also collecting data on Americans that they say can be used to create problems for the country.
Others have accused TikTok, with its endless stream of short videos, of reducing young people’s attention span, potentially making them less intelligent over time.
Concerns about TikTok have been around for years and many of the accusations seem to ring hollow. In 2020, US courts overturned the Trump administration’s ban on TikTok and WeChat, citing insufficient evidence of national security concerns and a likely overreach of authority.
Since then, TikTok has invested significantly in ensuring tighter compliance with US laws, including housing all of its US data with Oracle, an American company. Also, while ByteDance was founded in China, it is 60 per cent owned by US multinationals including Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group – Susquehanna’s co-founder Jeff Yass also happens to be the biggest donor in the US presidential election.
As for TikTok’s data gathering, well, so do the other big tech companies and apps, including Google and Facebook.
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Protests at US Congress after House passes bill that could potentially ban TikTok nationwide
Protests at US Congress after House passes bill that could potentially ban TikTok nationwide
The debate over a TikTok ban was revived recently after renewed calls by lawmakers. In a country where it often takes months to pass a bill, the fast-tracked TikTok legislation took just eight days to be passed in the House of Representatives. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden promised to sign the bill into law as soon as the Senate passes it. This is despite a large number of TikTok users in the US skewing liberal left and making up much of the voter base for Biden’s Democratic Party.
The trigger appears to be what the Economist calls “disquiet” and the Wall Street Journal “anger” over antisemitic content and misinformation in TikTok videos in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks.
TikTok came under the spotlight for carrying a significant amount of pro-Palestinian content when other social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, were accused of suppressing pro-Palestinian voices. For instance, TikTok’s videos with the #standwithpalestine hashtag were viewed nearly 15 times as often as its #standwithisrael content.
Concerned pro-Israel lobbyists in the US have confronted TikTok officials and pushed for the company to address what they saw as a growing antisemitic movement being hosted on the platform. Among those openly supporting the TikTok bill is the Jewish Federations of North America, which represents hundreds of organised Jewish communities.
Meanwhile, the debate over a TikTok ban has raged on, dividing the country. Among the conservatives, prominent figures have opposed a ban, variously criticising it as an assault on free speech and accusing the government of trying to control the lives of Americans – including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump who, in an about-face, argues that a TikTok ban would only benefit competitors such as Facebook, which Trump lambasts as “an enemy of the people”.
But other conservative figures support a TikTok ban, citing concerns over Chinese influence and even suggesting that the featuring of controversial LGBTQ content on the platform was designed to polarise the US public ahead of the presidential elections in November.
A similar divide is seen among the liberal politicians, with some Democrats voting against the bill and warning that a TikTok ban could alienate young Democratic supporters, many of whom are TikTok users. TikTok’s many content creators in the US, many of whom earn money from their videos, are also lobbying for the bill to be rejected.
What happens next is that the TikTok bill, officially called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”, will travel to the Senate and be subject to discussions and a vote. This could take months – leaders in the Senate have rejected the idea of fast-tracking the bill – during which there will almost certainly be strong pro-TikTok lobbying.
Even if the bill is passed by Senate, ByteDance will have six months to sell TikTok, failing which the app will then face a ban. If it came to it, such a sale would be extremely difficult, given what is expected to be a multibillion-dollar price tag as well as the hurdles of US antitrust laws and Chinese government approval.
Signage for ByteDance on a building is reflected in a mirror in Shanghai on March 14. Any sale of TikTok by ByteDance would require Chinese government approval. Photo: Bloomberg
If faced with a ban, TikTok is almost certain to want to challenge it and the legal proceedings could stretch over time. In addition to TikTok’s 2020 court victories against a Trump administration ban, it also succeeded last year in blocking a ban in Montana state, with the court ruling that such a move would violate Americans’ constitutional right to free speech.
The debate over a TikTok ban has stirred fierce feelings that defy the traditional conservative vs liberal divide, highlighted the controversy over the coverage of events in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and focused attention on the culture wars in America. Whatever the outcome, there is little hope of pleasing the crowd.
Mohammed Sinan Siyech is a doctoral candidate at the Islamic and Middle East Studies Department at the University of Edinburgh and a non-resident associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi
