What is the country doing with TikTok? Its quirky videos have attracted 150 million active U.S. users. However, U.S. officials are concerned that Beijing could subvert Chinese-owned apps to spy on Americans or spread propaganda. Meanwhile, many parents are concerned about the impact of TikTok on the mental health of their teens. Negotiations with U.S. regulators over the app’s plans to protect U.S. data on U.S. servers have failed. CEO Shoko Cho’s recent appearance before lawmakers failed to allay their concerns. The Biden administration has issued an ultimatum to TikTok’s Chinese owners: sell the U.S. subsidiary – which Beijing has said it will oppose – or face a potential ban. But a ban would anger large numbers of young Americans.
The national security case against TikTok is that companies doing business in China are obliged to hand over data if asked to assist with state intelligence. 60 percent of TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteTok, is owned by global investors; employees make up 20 percent. But people close to ByteTok say its Chinese founder Zhang Yiming owns the rest and controls shares through super voting rights.
TikTok has never been required to submit U.S. data to Chinese officials, and never will, Zhou insisted. No evidence of mass surveillance has been provided. But over the past year, cases of Chinese employees of ByteTok accessing U.S. user data, including that of journalists, have emerged. Security officials have also warned that TikTok’s powerful algorithms could be tweaked to spread misinformation on behalf of Beijing.
TikTok has failed to convince the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (Cfius) that its $1.5 billion “Project Texas” program to protect U.S. user data on Oracle’s servers is watertight. To resolve the ensuing U.S.-China standoff, selling TikTok would be preferable to banning it. But China has added ByteTok’s algorithm to its list of export restrictions and has said it will oppose any forced divestiture of TikTok.
Banning TikTok would amount to censorship of a service used by millions of people, and would likely be subject to a First Amendment challenge. Beijing will see it as an attempt by the U.S. to further suppress its corporate success story. While it could be seen as mirroring China’s restrictions on Facebook, Google and Twitter, it would provide cover for any foreign government to ban U.S. tech companies on similar grounds.
The prospect of a ban may convince TikTok to offer further guarantees to Cfius. But the U.S. should seek to address the issues surrounding not only Chinese-owned apps but all tech companies by creating a comprehensive federal framework for data privacy for domestic and foreign businesses in lieu of today’s convoluted and ever-changing laws. Data transfers to foreign countries should be banned and data brokers should be curbed from collecting citizens’ personal information in industrial quantities and selling it to all comers
While TikTok is a favorite among today’s teens, another major priority to protect teens from harm online could be equally well served by federal safeguards that apply to all social media companies. The U.S. controls are not as good as those in the European Union and fall short of the controls that will be adopted in the United Kingdom.
Many states have already adopted their own measures; Utah led the way last month by requiring social media companies to obtain parental consent to allow children to use apps and to verify that users are at least 18 years old. Similar age controls should be adopted at the federal level, along with stricter requirements for moderation and regulation of harmful content and rules governing advertising aimed at those under 18. The United States needs to protect its citizens, especially children. But that means properly regulating its own companies as well as those in China.