On the evening of Jan. 18, over 170 million TikTok users in the United States, including myself, found themselves unable to open the app. Before the app went dark, I — like many TikTok users — frantically saved hundreds of videos, trying to maintain bits and pieces of the platform that brought us connection and community.
The next day, users were welcomed back to TikTok with a message thanking President Donald Trump for the app’s restoration. The message referred to the executive order, signed on inauguration day, that allows ByteDance — the parent company of TikTok — 75 more days to sell the app before it is permanently banned. However, there’s no further incentive for ByteDance to sell TikTok than before Trump’s executive order, which suggests the app will remain unsold and will yet again be banned.
This gratitude for allegedly saving the app is undeserved, as it was Trump who first initiated the conversation about banning the app in late 2020. Trump’s push for a ban was based on claiming it represented a grave security threat for U.S. users, inciting fears that the app is stealing users’ data and selling it to the Chinese government. The ban was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, citing presidential overreach.
On April 24, 2024, former President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which gave ByteDance 270 days to sell the app to an American company, or it would be banned. The months leading up to the app going dark were filled with unheeded threats of a ban, embarrassing congressional hearings and TikTok users expressing their outrage with the situation. While there are few issues that elected officials on both sides of the aisle agreed on, the support behind banning TikTok was surprisingly bipartisan. The uniting force seemed to be a fear that the Chinese government could somehow abuse TikTok’s algorithm to push communist propaganda onto American users, potentially influencing U.S. elections and the country’s political landscape.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has repeatedly rebuffed claims of Chinese interference with TikTok’s data, partly because the sheer amount of American influence on the app dwarfs that of China. While the Chinese founders of ByteDance own 20% of the app, around 60% of the app is owned by other investors, including major U.S. investment firms like Blackrock, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, on top of 60% of ByteDance’s board being Americans.
Many have come to believe that the ban was implemented to curb the pro-Palestinian content consumed by the average American viewer. TikTok has often served as a platform for people to educate one another, to learn about peoples lives all over the world and to organize. For example, since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, many Palestinians have used TikTok to describe the egregious conditions in the region and implore viewers to donate eSIMs and money. TikTok played a large part in influencing domestic politics as well and mobilizing the youth vote. It is also easy to see that the TikTok ban singles out the platform from other Chinese-owned apps, such as Temu and Shein. It also disregards the practices of Meta applications that may be American-owned, but sell user data to the highest bidder, and maintains data sharing partnerships with several Chinese electronics companies.
As a result, many prominent figures like former North Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt and Israeli politician Amichai Chikli have all pushed for a ban on the app to limit what they believe to be an abundance of pro-Palestinian content. Given other Chinese-owned apps haven’t received any federal attention for their data insecurity, it seems clear that restricting that content on TikTok is the main focus of this bipartisan push.
Many have claimed that Trump’s temporary TikTok extension was a planned propaganda move to win over younger voters, with politicians like U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alleging that the message from TikTok thanking Trump signals private cooperation between the app and the administration. With the owners of both Meta and X in Trump’s corner, the new administration has worked to consolidate the United States’ social media sphere into something that can be easily swayed and controlled by the federal government from the top down. Trump abandoned concerns about TikTok he appeared to hold in 2020, claiming that he may have won the youth vote due to the platform and therefore holds “a warm spot” in his heart for TikTok. The reversal of the TikTok ban is a further step toward securing Trump’s position as the authoritarian leader of the United States, with a tight fist around political discourse in the country.
In alignment with Trump’s previous contentious remarks toward China, the TikTok ban has only aggravated the adversarial dynamic between the United States and China. Despite Trump’s claims that the Chinese government is swindling the United States out of “hundreds of billions of dollars” through the alliance between the United States and China, American TikTok users haven’t taken the bait. In an unexpected twist, over 3 million Americans downloaded the Chinese app RedNote — an analog of TikTok which has far more Chinese influence and engagement on the app — out of fear of the app’s closure. This has led to a surprising amount of dialogue between American and Chinese users, an outcome that was undoubtedly not the goal of President Trump and his administration.
That being said, Chew’s warm words for Trump could pose future problems for the app. Already users have begun to report potential signs of censorship on the app, including restrictions on sharing certain content, as well as additional disclaimers and limited search results on controversial topics. If the cost of doing business in the United States is restricting certain undesirable content on TikTok, then it seems like Chew is willing to play ball, at least for now. In the face of such blatant censorship it won’t be easy, but TikTok’s users will have to make their voices heard to call out the crackdown on free speech. If politicians continue working to co-opt the app for propaganda purposes, then we need to stay vigilant and identify the centralization of information and control whenever it rears its head.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Leila Olukoga at [email protected].
