Over the week of Jan. 18, The American public, the owners of TikTok, and the Supreme Court underwent a rollercoaster of drama, distress, and distrust over the recent banning, then unbanning of powerhouse social media app, TikTok.
The idea of banning the app came in August 2020 when Donald Trump signed an executive order to have TikTok banned in the United States, unless it was purchased by an American owner. According to NPR, the White House was initially concerned with TikTox taking users’ search history and location data.
TikTok defended this, saying other tech giants, such as Google, follow the same procedures. However, the majority of the government’s fear doesn’t lie in the app itself but in its parent company ByteDance.
ByteDance is a Chinese-owned company, which worried the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives, due to fear of the company potentially siphoning users’ information to the Chinese government. ByteDance refusing to sell TikTok to an American company violates the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), which was passed by Congress, then signed by former President Joe Biden to directly attack the app.
Not only would TikTok have been banned, but other apps owned by ByteDance such as Capcut, Lemon8, Gauth, and others.
While there is no substantial evidence to prove that information is currently being sold to Chinese government intelligence, the Senate and the House are completely valid in their voting to ban the app.
The reason for this validity comes from the way China’s government uses data from Chinese companies. In 2015, Xi Jinping, and the Chinese Government created the “Made In China 2025 Plan.” The initiative was about “ identifying data control as the key to the nation’s ambitions.”
Following this, a slew of laws were passed by the Chinese Government, including: The National Intelligence Law of 2017, the 2017 Cybersecurity Law, the 2021 Data Security Law, and most notably, the 2023 Revision to the Counter-Espionage Law.
In the law, the Chinese Communist Party requires all citizens and organizations to assist the government with counter espionage operations.
Think about how ubiquitous TikTok has become in the everyday lives of many, especially young Americans. Information could be subtly spread by people in power in need of an agenda to push, or, even worse, your information, along with millions of others could be seized.
There are other reasons for the rise in distaste for TikTok: its short-form content, consisting of quick-hitting videos, and an addicting algorithm has been proven to lessen attention span. According to a Microsoft study, in the last 20 years, attention spans have reduced from two and a half minutes to just eight seconds.
This short-form content that TikTok employs is so effective that it has changed the way whole Industries work, specifically the music industry.
With TikTok being one of the main ways to promote music, artists have resorted to trying to find the best clip that will make a good 15-second TikTok sound as opposed to focusing on the quality of their respective music.
This has created a domino effect where music labels emphasize plastic-sounding, short songs above everything. This belief has been corroborated by LiveWire, who claimed, “TikTok’s fast-paced content, as well as its very diverse user base, has led to lower-quality music intended to appeal to as many people as possible, and the strive to create a hit that will make millions has outweighed the strive to improve the music landscape as an art form.”
The app was banned on Jan. 19 to the chagrin of its many users. However, the ban was lifted just hours later. TikTok was granted another 90 days to sell itself by President Trump, who somehow flip-flopped from being the primary architect of TikTok’s original banning, to now, being a TikTok apologist.
Trump is clearly using the popularity of the app to gain favor amongst younger Americans, and who knows how he actually feels about the controversial app. The concerns regarding TikTok takedown are reasonable.
The fear of limited free speech, the social aspect of the app, and the enjoyment that it brings to millions. Still, TikTok being taken down is imperative to the safety of the United States and to the privacy of the American people.
