House members are expected to vote on a bill on Wednesday that would force the owner of TikTok to sell the app or face a nationwide ban, despite objections by former President Donald Trump.
The effort to block TikTok has gained steam among Republicans in recent months over concerns that ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the popular app, could potentially share sensitive data on millions of Americans with the Chinese government, as reported by the Associated Press. ByteDance collects a wide range of data from its more than 170 million users in the United States, including browsing history, location, and biometric identifiers.
President Joe Biden enacted a ban against the app in 2022 that applied to federal employees’ use of the app on government-owned devices, with a narrow carve-out that permits its use by law enforcement and investigators.
Despite threatening to ban the app during his presidency, Trump has recently come out against the proposed legislation.
“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump said in a call-in interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Trump added that a ban on the app could lead to increased market share for Facebook, with whom Trump has a long-running feud over the 2020 election.
“When I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size,” Trump said. “I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”
Biden has already signaled support for the bill that recently cruised through a committee vote without opposition. Despite claims that there is no evidence that ByteDance has shared data, many House members believe the risk is too great to do nothing.
A Time Magazine article demonstrated how TikTok shapes public opinions. By looking at the amount of content related to the Hamas-Israel war on multiple platforms, the author showed that TikTok displays significantly more anti-Israel content than other social media platforms.
Anthony Goldbloom, CEO of Sumble, wrote in the Time article that the alleged manipulation of social media messaging by Russian actors in 2016 was a “warning shot” about the potential hazards faced by TikTok.
“We need to take that very seriously, not only because TikTok is generally influential with young Americans, but because we’ve already seen it drive political sentiment, especially on college campuses,” Goldbloom wrote.
It is not just antisemitic sentiments that are causing concern. CNN reported in 2023 that TikTok users spread anti-American propaganda and demonstrated support for Osama bin Laden through the platform. ByteDance claimed that the sharing of the pro-terrorism propaganda violated its terms and that the videos had been removed, but CNN subsequently found multiple videos on the platform supporting beliefs attributed to the dead leader of Al Queda.
The current bill is likely to move quickly through the House and has garnered bipartisan support, though it is less clear how it will fair in the Senate, which has a more difficult threshold to overcome. Biden has indicated that should Congress pass the bill, he would sign it.
