The US Senate gave the green light on Tuesday to send some 57 billion euros to Ukraine, but the news about the war aid was overshadowed by another vote. 170 million TikTok users are at risk of losing their favorite app. An approved legal text states that hostile states may no longer offer platforms on American territory. Apps that the president considers a threat to national security and have more than a million users can be targeted.
This is not yet a problem for, say, North Korea and Iran, but the Chinese ByteDance will immediately find itself in difficult positions. TikTok’s parent company must find a buyer for the American branch of the company within a year. If this is not done, the app will no longer be available for download in the app stores. Existing users can still watch videos temporarily, but it is a postponed death sentence. It is then no longer possible to perform updates.
TikTok has been in the sights of the US government for some time. Experts fear that the platform could share sensitive user data with the Chinese government. These concerns are not entirely unfounded, as the Communist Party has increased its scrutiny of local tech companies in recent years.
Party members often even have a seat on the board of directors. “This often concerns companies that are less or not active internationally. TikTok is an outsider in that respect, because ByteDance wants to go very international with the app,” says digital strategist Thomas Smolders. There are security laws that require Chinese companies to hand over user data if the government requests it, but there is no certainty that TikTok ever did so. “That is why it is very difficult from a legal perspective to make a case out of this.”
Previous lawsuit
President Joe Biden has now announced that he wants to quickly sign the final signature to ratify the law, but TikTok cannot be easily wiped off the map. The company’s American headquarters wants to challenge the law and is violating the right to freedom of expression. During a previous lawsuit in Montana, the platform was able to prove its point with the same argument. It remains to be seen whether the judges will again rule this time that a ban can lead to censorship. After all, the political pressure on the file is immense.
“It has become a symbolic dossier for politicians. They want to get this ban through at all costs so that they can emerge with a victory,” says Smolders. They also receive support from American tech companies that see their opportunity to finally deal with a foreign competitor for good. Meta in particular, which has Instagram and Facebook in its portfolio, has seen many users move to TikTok in recent years.
If the legal text were to survive the legal hurdles, senior research associate at the Institute for Directors Olivier Braet believes there is a good chance that the app will disappear completely from the American market. A takeover costs a lot of money and the most important American tech players are not allowed to bid anyway due to competition law. “In the event of a sale, TikTok would continue as a brand name in the United States, but would be linked to another company. ByteDance will never accept this, they would rather pull the plug,” says Braet.
Above all, he believes the law is a missed opportunity to have a thorough debate about the operation of platforms such as TikTok. Opponents are quick to argue that the Chinese app will be used as a propaganda channel, but other companies are also struggling to prevent hate speech or images of abuse. Only the origin of the app is enough to ban the app, not what actually happens with it. “There is no technical or substantive evidence that TikTok does things that other platforms don’t do. From a strict legal perspective, this is clumsy legislation,” says Braet.
Addictive
Compared to the United States, the European Union’s approach appears to be somewhat more reserved and focused. Although officials in several Member States have been instructed to delete TikTok from their phones for security reasons, there are currently no plans for a general ban. Instead, the European Commission has targeted TikTok Lite, a program that rewards users for watching videos or inviting friends to post themselves. Experts fear that this effect is addictive and the Commission therefore wants to take it offline and have it thoroughly assessed. TikTok will still have some time to come up with counter arguments.
If the American ban on TikTok is effective, Smolders does not think there will be major consequences for the operation of the app in other countries. And even a definitive ban across the ocean is unlikely to happen immediately.
