Wednesday was a massive day at the exact point where the awesome power of social media intersects with the law.
The House voted on a bill that could lead to a TikTok ban in the U.S. The bipartisan bill, H.R. 7521, known in short form as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would require TikTok to sever any and all relationships with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, within 180 days or face a ban in the United States.
This legislation purportedly aims to protect national security by preventing apps developed by foreign adversaries from being distributed in the U.S. On Wednesday morning, China responded just a few hours before the House vote by making it crystal clear that the U.S. banning TikTok is an “act of bullying.”
On Wednesday, it received more than the required two-thirds majority in the House, with 352 members in favor and 65 opposed. This supermajority was needed as the vote was under suspension of the rules, so its passing is seen as far more bipartisan than it would have been with a simple majority.
If this bill now finds a way to make it through the Senate, ByteDance will have to sell TikTok or the app will be banned from U.S. app stores and web-hosting services. In other words, you won’t be able to download TikTok in the U.S.
Why did the bill gain such strong momentum in the House, with the Biden administration also agreeing to support it as a measure to safeguard national security?
The foundational argument in support of the bill comes from an ongoing fear that TikTok is a threat to U.S. national security. That TikTok could be weaponized as a tool for propaganda and data collection by the Chinese Communist Party isn’t a new concept but it’s one that gained a lot of traction in the House and propelled this bill.
The backup argument, which is always present with any of the major social media platforms, is that, national security issues aside, TikTok’s content moderation policies may not effectively address issues such as misinformation, promoting harmful behaviors, and ensuring children’s safety.
The counterpoints, which failed today but will be extremely important as this issue continues to play out in Congress, center around the Constitution and free speech.
The first point, that banning TikTok could infringe on users’ free speech rights and limit their choice of communication technologies, is currently being embraced by former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. As Trump, who owns social media platform Truth Social, argues, a TikTok ban would drive more people to Facebook, which he sees as “an enemy of the people.”
There is, of course, a downstream effect to any ban of a major social media platform. As New York lawyer William H. Cooper points out, “There is a strong argument that banning TikTok would violate the First Amendment because it would limit speech on the platform as well as hurt influencers and businesses that use TikTok to earn revenue through what they say on the platform.”
But anyone who uses TikTok for their livelihood or just to share and consume content doesn’t need to hit the panic button quite yet, because there is a lot still in play here.
As you read this, TikTok influencers, creators and lobbyists are on Capitol Hill working as hard as they possibly can to balance out what happened in the House. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has also been leading the charge to meet with senators to make the case against ByteDance’s forced divestiture of TikTok. To underestimate the political power of this collective is to miss how powerful a company and concept TikTok is today in the United States.
It is very important to note that there is currently no companion bill in the Senate. While Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) came out strongly in favor of H.R. 7521 and said they would support a similar bill in the Senate, there doesn’t appear to be anywhere near the same momentum there to have the clock start to tick on TikTok.
The recipe in the Senate is particularly complicated because Trump only made his pro-TikTok declaration on Truth Social a few days before the vote. So, practically, if we factor in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s lack of commitment to bring the issue to a vote in the Senate, those who powered H.R. 7521 through the House may be looking through a glass darkly over the next days and weeks.
As Cooper points out, “There are 170 million people in the United States who would be impacted by an effective ban on TikTok. Any decision to ultimately ban Americans from downloading the app, which is what the House bill promises absent ByteDance’s divestiture, would surely face a long and arduous series of court battles.”
Let’s keep one critically important thing in mind, given that it’s March of an election year:
A sizable number of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok — particularly those who use the platform to earn all or part of their living — will be watching extremely closely how this goes in the Senate, just as they watched what happened in the House. Any politician who doesn’t believe that in 2024 people will be motivated to vote at the exact point of intersection between their pocketbook and civil liberties is entirely missing the zeitgeist.
Finally, we all need to divest ourselves of the notion that, even if TikTok has its arms twisted into severing the ByteDance relationship, the platform will be free from influence from China and the Communist Party of China. As someone who has lived and worked in Beijing, I can assure you that this isn’t even remotely how things work.
Every massively powerful Chinese company takes direction from the central party. Period. So no matter what cosmetic result might be the eventual outcome of the current TikTok machinations in Congress, what will surely not happen is TikTok’s transformation into a free and independent platform. As long as TikTok or any other important Chinese company doing international business exists, it will be inextricably bound to central party influence.
A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Aron Solomon is the chief strategy officer for Amplify. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world.