The potential ban on TikTok – something that terrifies 170 million Americans and an untold number of online entrepreneurs – is quickly becoming a tangible reality. But until it crystallizes with the signature of US President Joe Biden, nothing is certain and everyone has questions.
Since the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would impose a ban unless TikTok's parent company, Chinese-owned ByteDance, sold the platform, not a day goes by without someone asking me if TikTok will disappear from US app stores and phones. .
Some believe a ban is almost inevitable. I'm not so sure. Even those who support the bill – which now moves to the US Senate – insist that prohibition was never the goal.
As Senator Mark Warner told NPR this week: “People were saying it's a ban on TikTok. No, we want China to divest.” In other words, the US government hopes to force ByteDance to sell, leaving the option of a ban as a last resort.
Warner points to previous success, when the U.S. government pressured Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun to divest from dating app Grindr, and the company sold its stake in 2020. However, some key differences between The cases make it much less likely that the United States will enjoy similar success with TikTok.
Grindr was founded and developed in the United States in 2009 and was later acquired by a Chinese company. TikTok, which began life in 2012 as the lip-syncing app Music.ly, was developed in China by ByteDance. The company eventually merged TikTok and Music.ly, running TikTok in the US and a separate, though essentially identical, app called Douyin in China.
TikTok's enormous popularity in the United States is certainly a source of pride for Chinese officials, and there is virtually no incentive for it to divest. US lawmakers demanding that China sell TikTok to an American company is equivalent to someone demanding that Ford Motor Company sell its Mustang business to a company outside the US.
There is an essential injustice in this American lawsuit – or at least there would be if it were not for the X factor of legitimate national security concerns.
What if they are right?
One argument Warner has made to almost anyone who will listen is that, as a company based in China, ByteDance must do what the Chinese government (actually, the Chinese Communist Party) asks of it. There is legitimate concern that the party could demand that ByteDance modify its powerful and effective TikTok algorithm to favor one candidate over another (whichever may be most beneficial to the Chinese Communist Party) in the November presidential election.
What Senator Warner and other officials rarely discuss is the work TikTok has done over the past two years to protect TikTok's US operations from China. The Texas Project, as it was called, moved all data to US cloud support, added independent US oversight, and even migrated legacy data from Chinese servers. Seven thousand American employees oversee TikTok's operations in the United States. So hasn't TikTok done enough to satisfy US lawmakers? Apparently not, and for me there is an important and lingering question.
Who controls the algorithm? While TikTok's APIs and data are more or less transparently controlled and managed in the US, it's not entirely clear who programs, updates, and determines the push and pull of TikTok's powerful algorithm. You could describe that part of the operation as a black box, and I think that's what worries everyone from Senator Warner to President Biden.
A forked road
However, as I see it, we now have two immovable forces. The US government, which is emboldened by near-total bipartisan support, will not back down on its demands for divestment, and the Chinese, who have no interest in giving up control of one of their most successful digital US companies.
If there's a glimmer of hope, it's that the strict timeline you've heard about—quick approval by the U.S. Senate, Biden's signature, then six months until a sale or ban—is not as set in stone as it seems. In fact, Warner admitted to NPR that an extension is possible.
Even under the most favorable circumstances, concluding a complicated business acquisition or company sale is a very complex matter. Even if all regulatory approval is waived, a sale could still take 12 months or more.
For those who use and love Twitter, all this is cold comfort. I've noticed that frequent TikTok users are now posting with one foot pointed out the door, noting that if all this goes wrong, “you can find me on Instagram.”
Let's say TikTok gets banned. It will suck for a while. However, we will eventually migrate to Reels, Shorts or something else, which will be fine since China doesn't own it.
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