TikTok has become a hot topic in today’s media landscape and has been under fire by the U.S. government for national security concerns since the beginning of last year. TikTok has undergone severe turbulence, being banned and unbanned in rapid succession by key players in America’s political landscape.
The effort to ban the app from the U.S. public has been fueled by the belief that ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant and owner of TikTok, could be forced to divulge American users’ data to the Chinese government.
These efforts were validated on April 20, 2024, when the House passed a bill forcing ByteDance to sell their wildly popular social media platform to a U.S.-based tech company or be banned. Just three days later, the bill was passed in the Senate with an overwhelming majority of 80-19. President Joe Biden the bill a day later, and since then, the situation has only escalated. TikTok filed suit against the federal government, forcing key political figures to pick sides.
ByteDance believes that banning its platform in the U.S. violates the First Amendment right to free speech of all Americans and reassures the public that the company has poured billions of dollars into protecting the data of American users from the Chinese government.
President Donald Trump proposed a government-funded acquisition with ByteDance just before his inauguration to protect the use of their platform in the U.S. that would entitle a U.S. company to own 50% of Tiktok, with ByteDance retaining the other half. Trump claims the deal would form a compromise between the two sides and would “make a lot of money,” although there has been no evidence that a deal will be made.
On Jan. 19, a day before the inauguration, the ban on TikTok took effect, crippling the app on all devices and sparking concern across WJ and virtually every other regular user in the U.S. Regardless, Trump kept his promise and passed an executive order the day after his inauguration, delaying the ban by 75 days, delaying the effect of all recent legislation.
Although Trump temporarily lifted the ban, the app has still been removed from all distribution platforms, including the Apple App Store and Google Play store, meaning that any user who does not currently have the app on their device cannot re-download it.
Although these distributors will likely reenable Tiktok on their platforms, they await further protection from financial punishment, a penalty that the original law claimed would be enacted on any digital distributor who gave access to the app.
“Any company that hosts, distributes, services or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton said in a post responding to TikTok’s announcement that the app will be restored.
WJ students expressed serious concern when TikTok was temporarily suspended, but there are a multitude of nearly identical products on the internet headed by the most influential social media platforms in America. Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight and YouTube Shorts are just some examples of products that use business models identical to TikTok. So why do students care so much? Some students claim that the “feed” from TikTok is superior to that of other apps.
“All I see on Reels is car crashes and racist memes,” junior Eli Frankel said. “TikTok’s content is more dialed back and actually has a filter.”
Others believe that the algorithm TikTok uses can more accurately find content that appeals to the user.
“TikTok has always had better content. Its stuff is way more entertaining than Reels, probably because their algorithm is way better,” senior Cohen Cross said.
The issue over TikTok has bolstered significant media coverage and has highlighted deeper political and legislative implications, specifically regarding the ever-changing dynamic between national security and freedom of speech.