The TikTok Situation Is a Mess.
If you like TikTok, you’re not alone. Now the application is used by billions of people , of which only 170 million are Americans. Many of those millions are, of course, concerned and unhappy about a bill passed by the House of Representatives this week that could ban the app in the United States . While the bill’s fate in the Senate is unknown, if it passes, President Biden says he will sign it. And if parent company ByteDance fails to sell the app within six months of signing, we’ll say goodbye to TikTok in the US.
I feel for anyone upset at the prospect of losing their favorite app. But here’s where we need to take a step back: Whether it’s lawmakers cracking down on the app or TikTok fighting for its life, things are getting out of hand and getting weird . And whatever happens here, I’m not sure it will be good.
Congress is a bunch of out of touch hypocrites.
Let’s not beat around the bush: Congress is generally handling this situation poorly .
Yes, lawmakers are concerned about the security implications of a wildly popular app based on a powerful algorithm controlled by a Chinese company. They are concerned about how addictive the app is among American children and what impact it might have on them. But my God, can we act like adults here?
The first example that comes to mind is, of course, Senator Tom Cotton. Even if you don’t know who Senator Cotton is, you’ve seen his infamous interrogation of TikTok CEO Shu Tzu Chu . Senator Cotton strongly questioned Shaw Tzu Chu’s ties to China, questioning him about whether he had ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party – despite Chu’s repeated confirmation that he was indeed a citizen of Singapore, not China. Show Tzu Chu’s response: “Senator, I am a Singaporean. No” has now become a meme:
Last year’s criticism of Chu in Congress also occurred , with many lawmakers taking the opportunity to voice their own views on the app rather than allowing Chu to answer questions or provide context. As CNN highlights , when Chu asked if he could respond to Rep. Kat Cammack’s critical speech, the committee chairman responded, “No. We’re going to move on.”
It doesn’t really help that Congress is so focused on TikTok when many of the big names in tech have very similar privacy policies. We don’t have anything like Europe’s GDPR here , and while we passively benefit from some of these protections, the lack of real American laws in this area means that American tech companies are also collecting and misusing our data. It’s no secret either: we all know that these companies collect as much of our data as possible and track our habits. We just know that our legislators have no interest in regulating this activity, and that we must adjust all the privacy settings given to us or download certain privacy-focused apps. If it’s Meta or Google, that’s fine . If it is an app like TikTok, it needs to be stopped at any cost.
It was this kind of theatrics and controversy that completely undermined Congress’s argument in the eyes of many TikTok users. People see the xenophobia and hypocrisy: they are not going to take Senator Cotton’s concerns seriously when he foolishly accuses the CEO of their favorite app of being a citizen of another country, while turning a blind eye to every American company that wants their data.
TikTok isn’t innocent either.
Look, Congress screwed everything up. But that doesn’t mean TikTok is on the winning side here. Unfortunately, Congress has some concerns about the app’s security issues. Yes, American companies do this too: but TikTok is not owned by an American company. ByteDance must answer to the Chinese government, and China has laws that require companies like ByteDance to hand over user data, including data from American users. I don’t blame the American government for not wanting their citizens’ data shared with any foreign government.
While many privacy and security issues are hypothetical, not all of them are. In 2022 , ByteDance employees obtained the IP addresses of American journalists from their TikTok accounts in an effort to root out leaks of company secrets. Last year , TikTok confirmed that some US user data was stored in China , despite the company’s previous assurances that this was not the case.
And then there is that famous algorithm. What makes TikTok so fun and addicting is that the algorithm is very good at showing you the content it thinks you’ll want to see. It’s okay if you’re interested in comedy, cooking, or even different points of view. But lawmakers have reason to worry that an app with a huge American user base and an extremely persuasive algorithm run by a company based in a geopolitical rival’s country could potentially have some compromising influence on the content those users see.
Users critical of lawmakers view these TikTok concerns more as a lack of U.S. government control over the information TikTok offers rather than issues of manipulation, and in some ways they may be right. But to claim that TikTok and its parent company are a neutral party interested only in spreading the pure, unbiased truth is absurd. TikTok and ByteDance are not the free press: they are businesses, and like other businesses, they have an interest in both your data and keeping you on the app for as long as possible. And while there is no evidence that the Chinese government has pushed TikTok to promote certain content to American users, I can appreciate the concern.
TikTok is already using its influence to influence its users. Yesterday, the company released a video of Chu, the CEO of TikTok, using TikTok to promote TikTok . I understand that the company does not want this bill to be passed. But the app is making users aware of its plight, asking them to flood Congress with phone calls expressing their disapproval . I can imagine a concerned member of Congress debating whether to pass this bill reading the comments on this video with fear. TikTok clearly has enormous influence over a huge swath of the country, and the company is doing little to convince lawmakers that the situation is not a cause for concern.
These are the users who are actually experiencing this right now.
Both Congress and TikTok have their points and their huge mistakes, but at the end of the day, it’s the users here that are really caught in the crossfire—and it sucks . Not only do many of these millions enjoy using the app for mindless entertainment, many rely on the app for their livelihood. An estimated seven million small businesses use TikTok , and while there are plenty of other social media apps to reach audiences on, banning the app will undoubtedly have a negative impact on everyone who currently relies on it.
If I could wave a wand and get Congress to pass real privacy laws that protect all Americans—so that whether you’re TikTok or Facebook, you have to play by the same rules—I would do it. This is what we desperately need, not a one-off law aimed at a single application. TikTok has a lot of problems. The US government has many problems. This whole situation is a complete mess and I’m struggling to see a good outcome from it.