Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
For many of the 170 million TikTok users in the United States, Wednesday’s vote in the House of Representatives to effectively ban the social media platform is worrisome. But the overwhelming — bipartisan even — decision to push forward a bill aimed at forcing ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell the social media app, shows how deep concerns run. The fact that it happened despite opposition from former President Donald Trump makes the moment even more remarkable.
The House bill would give ByteDance five months to divest, or it would ban app stores from offering it in the country. It’s unclear if the Senate will take up the bill, but it already tried a similar one last year, and Senators from both parties were impressed with the extent of bipartisanship in the House vote.
National security officials say TikTok could become a threat. But a look at TikTok’s feeds strongly suggests it already is far from a neutral player, aggravating divisions in the US and apparently trying to conceal posts on topics about which the Chinese government prefers silence. (A practice TikTok has denied).
Congress is right in wanting to curtail China’s ability to use TikTok to scoop up Americans’ private information and, more importantly, to influence views and opinions in a country that it views as its primary geopolitical rival.
Some headlines claim Congress wants to ban the app, and that’s what TikTok is telling users, mobilizing them to call Washington and pressure their representatives to reject the bill. But the flood of calls only added to the image of TikTok as an entity that can be used to manipulate Americans.
The number of Americans who get their news from TikTok is skyrocketing, according to the Pew Research Center. From 2020 to 2023, it quadrupled to 14%. And almost a third of adults under 30 say they regularly get their news from the app.
At a time like this, with Americans more deeply divided than ever, tensions running high with a pivotal election approaching and after the experience of 2020 and especially 2016, when Russia used social media to turn Americans against each other, leaving TikTok at Beijing’s disposal would amount to governmental dereliction of duty.
Under a 2017 Chinese intelligence law, Chinese authorities have full power to seize any information from Chinese companies and use those firms for their own purposes. TikTok CEO Shou Chew insists the company is independent of the government, claiming Beijing has never asked for US user data and maintaining that it wouldn’t comply if asked. Real life suggests otherwise.
The repressive Chinese government has made it almost routine to make powerful business leaders “disappear” if they offer even mild complaints about government policy. Some of them reappear after long periods, chastened and determined to toe the line. The cases of Chinese tycoons Jack Ma — who disappeared for months — and Xiao Jianhua, who was sent to prison following his reappearance after vanishing, shocked the global business community.
That’s just one reason why it’s laughable to hear China’s foreign ministry claim that the TikTok bill would disrupt market operations and undermine investor confidence.
Most of the world’s most popular social media apps, incidentally, are banned in China unless they — or their user data — are locally based and thus easily overseen by the government. There’s no Facebook in China, no Instagram, WhatsApp or X.
Trying to save itself, TikTok has moved American users’ data to Oracle-controlled servers. But the all-powerful algorithm remains out of reach.
On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said before Congress that the US “cannot rule out” the possibility that Beijing will use TikTok to influence the 2024 election. The US Annual Threat Assessment warned that in 2022 the Chinese government used TikTok accounts to target candidates of both parties. China denies it all and a US intelligence official told CNN there’s no evidence they’re doing it now, but it’s naive to think the manipulation is not already underway.
In recent months, TikTok has already added to political tensions in the US. A Wall Street Journal analysis found TikTok served a steady diet of the most extreme views on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war, stoking fear and anger, with posts such as one claiming that the US “has decided to exterminate all Arab countries.”
On the US economy, videos falsely claiming that the US — which is enjoying historical low unemployment — is experiencing a “Silent Depression” gained traction on TikTok. Analysts at Rutgers University found that TikTok appears to thwart videos about Tibet, the Uyghurs, the Hong Kong protests and the Tiananmen Square massacre, all topics that reveal the intensity of China’s repression.
In response to the analyses, TikTok quietly disabled the tool used to measure trends on the app.
Wednesday’s vote was a rare show of unity in a divided Washington. The bill passed by a wide margin — 352 to 65.
But perhaps more remarkable was the rebuke of former President Trump by his own party. Only 15 of 219 Republicansin Congress rejected the bill, which Trump opposed.
Trump’s position now is a neck-wrenching reversal. “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States!” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in July 2020. At the time, he was battling China not only on trade issues but on Covid, seeking to put the spotlight on the country in connection with the pandemic.
Concerns about TikTok’s ability to sweep up data from millions of Americans were already high on the national security agenda. Trump was so adamant against the app that he even opposed a potential deal for Microsoft to buy TikTok.
But now, Trump has reversed course and he opposes the bill. He claims it would only help Facebook, which he has labeled an “enemy of the people,” a favorite phrase he’s borrowed from the Stalinist purges in the USSR.
It’s impossible to know with full certainty what motivates Trump’s shift. But it’s worth asking if it has something to do with Republican billionaire Jeff Yass, a mega-donor who owns a slice of ByteDance and has hired former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to lobby against the bill. She has had multiple meetings with legislators and has spoken with Trump about protecting TikTok, according to the Washington Post.
Could Trump also be influenced by a propaganda film produced by the far-right group Citizens United, which blamed Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg for his election loss in 2020?
Defying Trump is a notable move for today’s congressional Republicans. It shows that concerns about TikTok have reached a critical mass. It’s unclear how far this legislation will go and at what speed.
What is beyond doubt is that social media has become such a powerful force that curtailing TikTok’s ability to harm the country should be only the first step, even if it makes users uneasy.
The government needs to develop oversight rules for all social media. Leaving the companies to police themselves is only worsening the country’s ills.
