The Clock Winds Down on TikTok
The adversary owned TikTok is finally being shut down by a bi-partisan collection of lawmakers. Why is the app so bad even Republicans and Democrats are willing to work together and what comes next?
On Wednesday, April 24th President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that will lead to the end of TikTok as we know it either by seeing the app banned coast to coast or sold to a non-Chinese owned corporation. This action coincided with Congress passing a series of bipartisan bills through the House and Senate.
Why is TikTok so bad?
As we have discussed previously, 2023 has not been kind to the social media giant TikTok and 2024 appears be more of the same. Last year, the European Union fined TikTok the equivalent of $16,000,000 for failure to comply with regulations requiring social media companies to police illegal content, prohibit certain advertising practices geared toward children, and share data with authorities when requested.
United States intelligence officials also raised several alarms about the app saying that it was part of a larger strategy by the Chinese government to influence Americans, that the app could be used to spy on or obtain blackmail on Americans, and that the program itself shares the sensitive data of its users with 13 different, largely unknown, outside sites for mysterious purposes. Security risks were considered so high that dozens of government agencies and municipalities, such as New York City, banned the app from government devices.
Finally, several studies were published or updated detailing how addictive TikTok was and the dangers it possessed, especially to children.
The mounting pressure from academic and security experts coupled with left wing and right wing leaders, the former for fears of election interference and the latter for fears of growing Chinese influence, meant that a ban or something similar was inevitable. However, the dangers TikTok posed receded from the public consciousness until recently.
What does the Legislation Do?
The issue finally came to a head in March when Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the Chairman of the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, put forth the bill requiring ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok to sell the application or be banned from operating in the United States. Evidently, while the public had largely forgotten about President Trumps previous attempts to ban the application and the alarms being sounded about its capabilities, Congressman Gallagher and his colleagues, from both sides of the aisle, were hard at work making the ban a possibility.
“The fact that we didn’t leak the content of those negotiations to the media, it’s just a function of how serious our members were,” Gallagher told a group of reporters after 352 members voted in favor of passing HR 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (just 65 voted against it). “We had multiple iterations. We invited technical assistance from the White House, which improved the bill.” [1]
The legislation than moved swiftly through Congress and onto the Presidents desk on Wednesday where he quickly signed it. The new law gives TikTok's Chinese Communist Party controlled parent company until Sunday, June 19, 2025, 270 days to sell the app or have it removed from US app stores and "internet hosting services".
TikTok’s Response
TikTok quickly made it clear they would not sell saying through their CEO "We aren't going anywhere" and that “We are confident and we will keep fighting for [the publics’] rights in the courts, […] The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail.” Chinese officials and supporters quickly joined the outrage online but one cannot help but feel their outrage is disingenuous when their own country banned dozens if not hundreds of U.S. owned applications including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Pinterest, SnapChat, Quora, and Tumblr.
Further, the company remains adamant that they are not sharing intelligence on U.S. interest or citizens. However, it should be pointed out once again that in 2018 China amended its National Intelligence Law which requires any organization or citizen to support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence work. That means ByteDance is legally bound to help with gathering intelligence.
What Comes Next?
ByteDance had made it clear through various statements and channels that it has no intention of selling TikTok despite various reports to the contrary. As of this writing they continue to claim a lawsuit is forthcoming to prevent the ban from going into effect but no such action has yet been filed.
TikTok poses a grave danger to the United States due to it’s ability to collect data on our citizens and interests with no checks on it’s power. Citizens would be outraged if they found out a foreign adversary had hidden millions of cameras around the country but that is, ostensibly, what the Chinese Communist Party has done. President Biden and Congress must steel their nerves and fight whatever action is brought in order to protect their constituents and the integrity of the United States.
