It took a few months, but Congress has now passed a law, and President Biden has signed it, that would ban the popular social media app TikTok in America if it is not sold by its Chinese owners.
There are definite First Amendment questions about whether this is the right thing to do, but given the stakes between the two countries, the answer leans toward yes.
The ultimatum to TikTok was tucked into a long-debated package that provides $95 billion in foreign aid, mostly to Ukraine and Israel.
Proponents of the legislation have claimed the Chinese government could force TikTok to hand over data of American users, which might then be used to identify intelligence targets or roll out disinformation campaigns.
Critics say the law is an infringement on the freedom of speech rights of the 170 million U.S. users of TikTok by potentially removing a platform they use to express themselves.
Donald Trump has flip-flopped on the question for obvious political reasons. When he was in office, he issued a series of executive orders designed to force the removal of TikTok from Chinese ownership, but the courts knocked those down. Now he opposes a ban on TikTok, believing it would only empower American social media apps that he believes are working against him, such as Facebook.
The new law gives TikTok nine months and possibly up to 12 months to be separated from its Chinese parent company, several months longer than originally proposed. If it misses that deadline, app stores in the United States would be prohibited from offering it on their platforms. Americans who have already downloaded the app would be able to continue to use it — for a while. But because TikTok wouldn’t be able to send updates, security patches and bug fixes, over time the app would likely become unusable, reports The Associated Press.
Is the law an overreaction? After all, the U.S. is not at war with China. Confrontations loom, however, and the Chinese have amply demonstrated that they are not to be trusted when it comes to snooping not only on their own people but also American companies, whose trade secrets they try to steal.
TikTok has not given up fighting back, though. Having lost in its effort to mobilize the app’s users against Congress — TikTok’s owners apparently failed to realized that U.S. politicians are not too worried about people who are unlikely or too young to vote — it is now threatening to challenge the law in court.
“The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression,” the company has said. “This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
Actually, damage would only occur if the Chinese owners of TikTok refuse to sell. More to the point, even if TikTok disappears, there are plenty of other video-sharing and social media apps on the internet, including Trump’s own Truth Social. Plus new ones almost certainly would emerge in an effort to capture a slice of TikTok’s former U.S. market. Nobody’s right to free expression would be curtailed. The threat of Chinese spying, though, would be.
