President Joe Biden signed a bill in April 2024 that could result in a nationwide ban of the popular video-based social media platform TikTok if its parent company, ByteDance, does not sell its stake in the app.
Congress passed the original TikTok legislation, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, in March 2024. That bill, introduced by Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI), never made it to a Senate vote. Instead, the TikTok provision was tacked onto the National Security Act, a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel that had bipartisan support in both houses.
Legislators argue that TikTok presents “a significant threat to the national security of the United States” due to ByteDance’s connections to China.
“We have given TikTok a clear choice,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said. “Separate from your parent company ByteDance, which is beholden to the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party), and remain operational in the United States, or side with the CCP and face the consequences.”
ByteDance now has until Jan. 24, 2025 to find someone else to buy the app for a hefty price tag, which some experts predict could be over $100 billion. If they can’t find a buyer, app stores and web hosting services will no longer be allowed to offer TikTok for download.
The app won’t disappear from people’s phones if it’s already downloaded, and those who still use it won’t go to jail. But the app won’t be allowed to update, degrading its quality over time and eventually making it unusable.
President Biden could also extend the deadline by an additional 90 days if a deal is still in progress, and legal challenges may extend it even further. So, the timeline for an actual ban is still uncertain.
What are the concerns over national security?
Since ByteDance is based in Beijing, many lawmakers fear that China could demand access to TikTok’s user data at any time under the National Intelligence Laws they passed in 2017, which require organizations to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.”
This has never happened, TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified to Congress in January. TikTok has also stated repeatedly that if it did happen, it would deny such requests.
Lawmakers are also concerned that TikTok could be used to spread disinformation and push narratives promoted by the Chinese government.
Rep. Gallagher, who chaired the new House Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party before announcing his retirement in March, referred to TikTok as “digital fentanyl made by China” in a blog post that describes his belief that the app is “brainwashing our youth” to support Hamas.
There is no evidence of this happening, either.
“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew testified to Congress last year.
The company has put over $1.5 billion toward initiatives to protect American user data in a plan called Project Texas, which was developed after a 2022 BuzzFeed News investigation revealed that Chinese TikTok employees had accessed U.S. user data like birthdays and phone numbers.
But tech privacy advocates have argued that these issues are not specific to TikTok, and that the U.S. should prevent social media companies from collecting sensitive data about its users in the first place rather than targeting specific apps.
“Not a single thing that we heard in today’s classified briefing was unique to TikTok,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif) said the day before the recent House vote. “It was things that happen on every single social media platform.”
What are some of the challenges the bill is up against?
TikTok itself sued the U.S. government in May, arguing that the bill violates constitutional protections of free speech for its 170 million U.S. users.
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide,” the lawsuit states.
A group of eight TikTok creators also sued the U.S. government shortly after, citing similar arguments over the First Amendment.
“In supporting the Act, lawmakers claimed that TikTok ‘manipulate[s]’ American minds and disseminates ‘propaganda’ that would ‘use our country’s free marketplace to undermine our love for liberty,” the lawsuit states. “But it is the Act that undermines the nation’s founding principles and free marketplace of ideas.”
The ban has also become a major talking point in the 2024 presidential election. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump now claims to oppose the TikTok ban, despite signing an executive order to ban the app back in 2020 during his presidency.
“Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in April. “Young people, and lots of others, must remember this on November 5th, ELECTION DAY, when they vote!”
Nearly two-thirds of young adults reported using the app in a Pew Research Center survey in January.
Before the bill was passed, TikTok spent $2.1 million running television ads against it in battleground states.
“Think about the 5 million small business owners that rely on TikTok to provide for their families,” one of the ads states. “It’s gonna affect a lot of people’s livelihoods.”