The House of Representatives passed a bill in March 2024 that has moved TikTok, a short-form video hosting platform owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, one step closer to a complete ban in the United States. But will that really happen, and if so, how will it affect 170 million users present on the platform, some of which are legitimate US businesses? Well, let’s not panic and get ahead of ourselves. The future of TikTok might not be as bleak as it sounds.
Before we dive into the probabilities of TikTok actually being banned in the US, let’s first address the issues that led to the House of Representatives voting on the bill. And voted they have! In Congress, 352 members voted in favor of the bill, which puts TikTok in a really tough spot. And this isn’t even the first or the only time someone in the US tried banning TikTok. The “President Whose Name Shall Not be Spoken” tried banning the platform but was ultimately blocked by courts on First Amendment grounds. So, what’s all the hype about, and why is TikTok suddenly such a big issue?
TikTok is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance. That in itself probably wouldn’t be a problem, were it not for China’s ruling political party — the Communist Party of China — which has a nasty habit of instilling party lackeys in all the important places, thus exerting control. China is a very heavily surveilled state, and everything the people ingest information-wise is controlled and most probably served by the government as propaganda against the “Evil West.”
The country has its own internet, and all the major internet services that are accessible to the developed world, such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc., have been banned by the Chinese government. Instead, their app stores offer domestic apps that only host content propagated and prescribed by the government of the People’s Republic of China. TikTok in China looks, feels, and works very differently from its worldwide counterpart, particularly when it comes to content since all content on the platform has to be educational; otherwise, it faces prompt removal.
However, the United States and its citizens have something known as the freedom of speech and expression, which is our constitutional right. As a result, we don’t face such strict moderation, apart from those implying that our personal freedoms should limit the freedoms of those around us. But therein lies the problem: social media has been used to influence public perceptions and actions before, and this time, the US government believes that the Chinese will use their platform to influence the elections or try to destabilize the economy.
Those fears are partially justified. TikTok collects user data from US citizens and feeds it to a Chinese company outside of US jurisdiction, which could pose a security issue with the States. Furthermore, the inner workings of the content recommendation algorithm haven’t been made transparent, so U.S. authorities who might be concerned don’t actually know how the algorithm operates. So, the issue is TikTok’s Chinese ownership, and the solution proposed by the House of Representatives isn’t actually calling for a ban on TikTok.
Instead, the political body is calling for a divestiture — a process by which a company sells off an asset or subsidiary — of TikTok. Under the new bill, assuming that it’s signed by President Biden, who also uses TikTok to connect with young voters, ByteDance would have 165 days to divest TikTok to a company that’s not based in China. If the company fails to comply, its app will be legally barred from the Apple App Store, Google Play, or any other digital storefront that’s currently hosting it.
Opposing this decision, however, are 170 million TikTok users — which is basically half the US — as well as content creators and civil liberties and digital rights groups who insist that the ban would infringe on freedom of speech. So, the ban on TikTok could only happen if ByteDance fails to sell or at least initializes the sale of its social media platform within the given timeframe. As previously stated, this isn’t the first time the US politicians have coordinated an attack on a Chinese-owned service.
In 2020, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) ordered Kunlun Tech, a Chinese company that had purchased Grindr — a popular dating app for the LGBTQ+ community — to divest its interests, citing national security concerns. Kunlun Tech conceded, and the company sold Grindr to a group of investors and entrepreneurs outside of China in a deal valued at $608.5 million. Considering the vast popularity of TikTok, it’s highly unlikely that a ban will occur since the US government would be incurring widespread dissatisfaction among many citizens across political aisles.
While we wouldn’t throw that possibility out the window just yet, a divestiture is a much more logical and profitable step. However, we can imagine that deal value measuring in billions rather than millions.