A kind of tradition has even emerged whenever Congress tries to do oversight of Big Tech: A committee will convene a hearing, tech CEOs will show up, and then lawmakers will make fools of themselves by asking questions that reveal how little they know about the platforms they’re trying to rein in.Ĭongress has never heard from Chew, TikTok’s CEO, in a public committee hearing before, but representatives will get their chance on March 23. Americans already think their government leaders are too old, ill-equipped to deal with modern tech, and generally out of touch. 1) Do politicians even use TikTok? Do they know how it works or what they’re trying to ban?Īmong the challenges lawmakers face in trying to ban TikTok outright is a public relations problem. It’s been three years since the US government has seriously begun considering the possibility, but the future remains just as murky as ever. The thing is, nobody really knows if a nationwide TikTok ban, however broad or all-encompassing, will even happen or how it would work if it did. It’s a complex knot of technical and political decisions that could have consequences for US-China relations, for the cottage industry of influencers that has blossomed over the past five years, and for culture at large. As reports about a possible forced divestiture swirled, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, told the Wall Street Journal that he thinks the company’s efforts to wall off the app’s US user data and recommendation algorithms from Chinese interference are more than enough to satisfy any national security concerns.īut banning TikTok isn’t as simple as flipping a switch and deleting the app from every American’s phone, even if this new bill does pass. That would take the potential Chinese threat out of the equation entirely - but only if ByteDance and China agree to it. Meanwhile, a government interagency committee that has been investigating TikTok for years appears to be on the cusp of ordering ByteDance to divest, or sell off, the app. But that bill has been mired in controversy, with some pointing out that vague wording could lead to TikTok users facing fines and jail time for using things like VPNs to try to get around the ban. In March, a bipartisan group of 12 senators unveiled what might be the biggest threat to TikTok yet: a bill that would lay the groundwork for the president to ban the app. Meanwhile, there are still threats to TikTok on the federal level. “Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” Brooke Oberwetter, a spokesperson for the app, said in a statement. The first statewide ban may also be our first test of that. Several bills have been introduced that would ban TikTok outright, but it was never a sure thing that they’d get past the courts even if they did manage to pass. Until now, most of the scrutiny around TikTok resulted in partial bans on government-owned devices in the federal and the majority of state governments. “Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” the governor said in a statement. At least one of those will come from TikTok, which sued the state days after the law was signed. The Montana law goes into effect at the beginning of 2024, assuming it survives the inevitable court challenges. Rather, it fines platforms that distribute it, like Apple’s and Google’s app stores. The legislation doesn’t make it illegal to use TikTok. Montana became the first state to ban TikTok outright on May 17, when its governor, Greg Gianforte, signed the bill into law. But mostly, and especially over the past three years, TikTok has been fighting against increased scrutiny from US lawmakers about its ties to the Chinese government via its China-based parent company, ByteDance. First, the company struggled to convince the public that it wasn’t just for preteens making cringey memes then it had to make the case that it wasn’t responsible for the platform’s rampant misinformation (or cultural appropriation … or pro-anorexia content … or potentially deadly trends … or general creepiness, etc). Since its introduction to the US in 2018, TikTok has been fighting for its right to exist.
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