Congress grills TikTok CEO. Will a ban follow?

Is TikTok a Trojan horse for America’s greatest rival? Or is it a creative outlet that fosters community and entrepreneurship – and no worse than other social media platforms when it comes to privacy, screen addiction, and disinformation concerns? 

That’s the question at hand on Capitol Hill, where there’s growing momentum to ban the increasingly popular platform, whose parent company is Chinese. Fueled in part by pandemic shutdowns, the app’s reach has expanded nearly 20-fold over the past five years to more than 1 billion users. Of those, 150 million are in the United States – including 2 in 3 American teenagers. 

TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s testimony before Congress on Thursday marked one of the most anticipated appearances on the Hill this year. Speaking before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a packed hearing room, he argued that any safety and security concerns should be addressed through broad legislation rather than through targeted action against his company. 

“The potential security, privacy, content manipulation concerns are really not unique to us,” said Mr. Chew, a Harvard Business School graduate from Singapore. “We believe what’s needed are clear, transparent rules that apply broadly to all tech companies. Ownership is not at the core of addressing these concerns.”

What actions, if any, Congress ultimately takes will ride in large part on whether lawmakers agree with that framing. If they see TikTok as just another social media platform that could dull or destroy the American mind but is linked to China rather than Silicon Valley, singling it out may seem unfair or even xenophobic. But if they conclude the app poses a legitimate national security threat – as a potential vehicle for espionage or propaganda that goes beyond general concerns about privacy and disinformation – that could build support for specific actions up to and including a forced sale or outright ban. 

“From the data it collects to the content it controls, TikTok is a grave threat of foreign influence in American life,” said Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington Republican, who is calling for a ban on the platform. 

“It’s been said it is like allowing the Soviet Union the power to produce Saturday morning cartoons during the Cold War, but much more powerful and much more dangerous,” she added.

TikTok bans already in place

In February, the Biden administration ordered TikTok removed from all government devices. Canada, three European Union bodies, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom all have similar bans for government devices, and India banned it completely in 2020. The issue has gained momentum on Capitol Hill in the past few months, as a strong bipartisan coalition of lawmakers concerned about China has begun scrutinizing various aspects of the U.S.-China relationship. 

Advocates of a TikTok ban point to Chinese laws that allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to access the data of Chinese-owned companies, and say TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, could therefore be compelled to hand over data on American TikTok users. 

According to a Department of Homeland Security data security advisory to U.S. businesses, Article 7 of China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law allows Chinese intelligence agencies to secretly access U.S. data and compel Chinese firms to create back doors for the government to access data they don’t control. Those who obstruct such actions can be dismissed, investigated, and/or detained, the advisory said. 

Mr. Chew said in his prepared testimony that China had never requested data from TikTok on U.S. users, and that his company would not honor such a request. He also described an initiative in the works to address national security concerns, dubbed “Project Texas,” which includes building a “firewall” and moving U.S. data onto cloud servers run by Oracle. However, the Biden administration has reportedly rejected Project Texas as insufficient, pushing ByteDance to sell the company or face a ban on the platform. 

Lawmakers point to reports that U.S. data from the platform has already been shared within China. BuzzFeed reported last summer on recordings of more than 80 internal meetings that revealed that Chinese employees had access to U.S. user data at least on some occasions. “Everything is seen in China,” a member of TikTok’s trust and safety department said, according to the BuzzFeed report.

The FBI and Department of Justice are investigating reports that ByteDance gleaned data from the app about at least two U.S. journalists, including one from BuzzFeed, and used that data to surveil them. The ByteDance employees involved have been fired.

At a Monitor Breakfast this week, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia acknowledged that many of the China-specific concerns around TikTok are based on potential harm rather than on demonstrated harm, but urged a proactive approach.

“Do we really want to wait to see the potential of that exploitation?” asked Senator Warner, sponsor of the RESTRICT Act, which would give the Biden administration the power to ban TikTok as well as future companies linked with “foreign adversaries.” The bill has 18 co-sponsors, equally split between Democrats and Republicans. 

Why TikTok has garnered such appeal

Then-President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, but was struck down by federal judges. A renewed attempt to ban the app would likely face legal challenges, with critics and some legal scholars saying it raises First Amendment concerns. 

One challenge of implementing a ban now is that the platform has become an integral part of so many Americans’ lives – and livelihoods. Mr. Chew testified that more than 5 million businesses, many of them small businesses, use the platform. 

During the early months of the pandemic, Callie Goodwin of South Carolina was inspired to start a greeting-card company, @sparksofjoyco, to bring joy to people during a time of sadness and social isolation. Today, she has sold more than 35,000 cards – with 95% of her business coming via TikTok. 

“A ban would erase a source of income for millions of small-business owners across America,” she said at a gathering of opponents to a TikTok ban, held outside the House of Representatives on Wednesday. 

The gathering was headlined by Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, who has emerged as TikTok’s strongest ally in the House at a time when there is a growing bipartisan push to get tough on China. 

He advocated stronger legislation to address concerns around privacy, disinformation, and the potential for social media to cause real-world harm, but said it was important to do it in a comprehensive way and not single out any one company. 

After all, he pointed out, Facebook turned the other way as Russia used it to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and no one pushed to ban that platform.

“Let’s have a broader, more honest conversation about social media, and let’s not scapegoat TikTok because they happen to be owned by a Chinese organization in this time of heightened xenophobia since COVID.” 

Fellow progressive Rep. Robert Garcia of California championed the platform as an important space for marginalized communities. “There’s so many young queer kids, queer creators, who are able to find themselves in this space, share information, feel comfortable, and in some cases come out and share their stories,” said Representative Garcia, who is gay. 

The California congressman also extolled TikTok’s “uplifting” of the voices of Black and brown people in new ways, enabling them to create brands and platforms that he said they wouldn’t have been able to create on any other social media app.

Kristine Thompson, who promotes body-positive fashion for plus-size women to her 1.7 million followers on TikTok, says she agrees with that wholeheartedly. She highlights fellow TikTok creator Robert Lucas, a self-taught cake artist from Georgia, as someone she wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. He eventually developed such a following on TikTok that he was able to quit his information technology job. Today he has 2.6 million followers.

“TikTok has even introduced me to different nuances within my own community,” Ms. Thompson says.

Incisive questioning from lawmakers

Such views were largely left out of today’s hearing, which focused mainly on data privacy and misinformation concerns. Nor did lawmakers discuss the likelihood that a similar social media platform could emerge in TikTok’s place. 

Mr. Chew vowed that TikTok would prioritize safety, particularly for teens; protect U.S. data from foreign access and government manipulation; and be transparent. His opening statement departed from his prepared remarks, notably changing a promise to protect U.S. user data from “unauthorized” foreign access to protecting it from “unwanted” foreign access.

He faced incisive questioning from both House Democrats and Republicans at today’s hearing, who displayed unusual bipartisan unity. 

“Are you 100% certain that ByteDance or the CCP cannot use your company, or its divisions, to make content to promote pro-CCP messages for an act of aggression against Taiwan?” asked Chair McMorris Rodgers. 

After several exchanges in which she politely but firmly reiterated the question, and Mr. Chew did not directly answer, she added, “If you can’t say 100% certain, I take that as a ‘no.’”

Indeed, one issue that remains somewhat murky, even after today’s marathon hearing, is the relationship between ByteDance and TikTok, and how far the arm of the Chinese government can reach.

“It’s not just whether under a particular law, access could be given to this data,” says Sarah Cook, senior adviser for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House. “That’s the way the CCP operates; it has many avenues for applying coercion over a company to do its bidding.”

That said, an outright ban could be disproportionate – and a bad precedent, she adds. It’s important that the U.S., as a democracy, considers the balance between freedom of expression and data privacy. “How does a democratic society deal with these very real concerns, but in a way that itself protects rights? That’s a difficult circle to square.”