AVELLINO: TikTok is probably getting banned — good
The process of banning TikTok oscillates between glacial and breakneck.
In August 2020, former President Donald J. Trump floated a ban on the social media app that never materialized. Then, in the span of a couple of months, 34 states and the U.S. Congress passed a ban on the app on government devices.
In March 2023, a bill aimed at banning the app for all U.S. users gained momentum only to crash into a wall. Now, the U.S. House of Representatives is about to pass a new law that was introduced just last Tuesday.
This law, which would force TikTok's parent company ByteDance to sell it to an American firm or see it banned from U.S. app stores, has gotten overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Passing its committee 50-0, the House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) has promised to put the bill on the floor this week, and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said he will sign it.
With bipartisan support and little time for the billion-dollar behemoth to mobilize a lobbying effort, this thing is gonna become law. And that is something to celebrate because our relationship with this app sucks.
TikTok is like all other social media platforms: It is incredibly addictive, pushes harmful mental health content, increases eating disorders and reduces attention spans.
Meta executives who hid how much Instagram drives young girls' depression and suicide rates are the ones who profit from those negative mental health effects.
I would not terribly mind if we spent less time on these apps that mostly serve to worsen mental health and fatten executives' pockets.
But I do not think that is a good enough reason to ban TikTok. Sometimes we require reasonable regulations on dangerous endeavors, like warning labels for cigarettes or mandatory bike helmets for young children. But we do not completely ban tobacco or alcohol just because they are harmful, nor is anyone talking about banning other social media platforms, like Instagram or Snapchat.
We assume some level of personal responsibility for harmful actions, and the government should not constantly be in the business of trying to protect us from ourselves. What it should be in the business of is protecting us from foreign surveillance and propaganda.
The federal government and 34 states did not ban TikTok on government devices because they worry about bureaucrats developing anxiety from doomscrolling for too long. They banned it out of concern for espionage.
ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is a firm based in China, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enjoys unparalleled control over private activity. As detailed by Human Rights Watch, "The CCP has a record of making private Chinese companies carry out its political deeds, including censoring and surveilling Americans."
Most relevant for TikTok's purposes is the fact that Chinese firms are compelled to share all of their data with the government privately and whenever it sees fit.
That includes a ton of data that TikTok collects from you. The type of content you like and share and comment on is property of ByteDance and essentially property of the CCP. Your faceprints and voiceprints from when you record a TikTok are CCP property, too. We already know that TikTok knows your physical location and that it plans to use this data to track American citizens.
We do not know for certain that China has access to all of that data right now. But between exposés showing that data is stored in China and the closed-door briefings that have spooked congressional Democrats and Republicans enough to get along with each other, I am willing to bet it is more likely than not.
And I do not love the idea of an unfriendly government knowing where I am at all times. We have already seen the CCP use this technology to spy on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and TikTok has targeted journalists with sources from inside TikTok.
I also do not like China's government being able to beam whatever propaganda it prefers directly into my "For You" page. ByteDance has already admitted to using its other news apps to silence dissent. Posts about Tiananmen Square and Tibet are repressed. Commentary on Taiwan and the Uyghur genocide is stymied. And accurate information about the Russia-Ukraine conflict is manipulated to portray a pro-Putin agenda.
The concern that the Chinese government is going to use this app to push propaganda on and mobilize American citizens to its cause is real. Approximately a third of U.S. adults under 30 get news from TikTok, and social media is already flooded with misinformation about global conflicts. What happens when China starts pushing the algorithm even further to manipulate its 150 million American users into believing whatever it wants?
This is an insane threat to us and our country. It is not the same as Meta being able to sell me more specific products I might buy. American social media companies do track our data. But there is a world of difference between a private domestic company that collects data for the purposes of selling targeted ads and a foreign entity that functions as a global Ministry of Truth, tracking U.S. citizens' faces, locations and preferences for harmful means.
In an era of rising tensions with China over its human rights abuses, increasing corruptive influence of global institutions and rising militarism, is it so crazy to suggest our personal data and physical locations will be another weapon in a second Cold War? Giving Meta my location and user data is bad but not the end of the world — giving China that information just might be.
The next time you open TikTok and get that creepy message telling you to contact your congressperson to save TikTok, do not. I may enjoy the TikToks my friends and I send each other, but there is a bigger picture. This ban has to happen.
For the sake of our sovereignty, our health, our privacy and our integrity, each generation must make some sacrifice to our personal pleasure. Our great-grandparents served in a war. We can learn to live with Instagram Reels.
Noble Avellino is a junior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in economics and minoring in political science. Avellino’s column, “Noble’s Advocate” runs on alternate Mondays.
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