Why the US Government Is Trying to Ban TikTok

TikTok, a pawn in the US-China digital cold war

TikTok is a video-sharing app that allows users to create and share short videos on any topic. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, in just 7 years, TikTok has become the 5th largest social media platform in the world.

In 2021, TikTok.com dethroned Google.com as the world’s most visited website, and in 2023, it overtook Snapchat as the preferred social media network among American teenagers.

TikTok’s sudden virality, however, was not mere luck; it was a well-calculated move with the social media giant spending billions of dollars on marketing. In 2021 alone, TikTok spent an unprecedented $19.2 billion on marketing, outspending industry giants like Facebook, Twitter/X, Pinterest, and Snapchat combined to ensure its app was installed on the devices of billions of people around the world.

Unknown to most of TikTok’s user base, however, beneath the light-hearted dance clips and comedy skits, lies a darker reality. TikTok is operated by ByteDance, a Chinese technology company that is legally obligated to provide the Chinese government with all user data it collects, should the Chinese government request it.

To make matters worse, evidence has come to light that some ByteDance employees previously worked for the Chinese government and have improperly accessed TikTok data in the past to spy on American citizens.

The Origins of TikTok

To understand the controversies surrounding TikTok today, it’s important to look at the humble beginnings of its parent company ByteDance, and its founder Zhang Yiming.

In 2012, Zhang Yiming and a group of his engineering friends came together to launch ByteDance, a technology company dedicated to developing applications. That same year, they launched Neihan Duanzi, an app that allowed users to share memes and humorous videos. But, more importantly, the ByteDance team introduced Toutiao.

Toutiao was a news recommendation platform designed with the primary objective of maximizing user retention. To achieve this goal, the ByteDance team created an AI algorithm that collected vast amounts of user data and analyzed user behavior to determine the most engaging content to present.

Employing computer vision and natural language processing, the AI algorithm powering Toutiao could understand the content of each article, and by monitoring minute user behavioral patterns, such as the scrolls, taps, and pauses users made on each article, the AI was able to construct an interest profile of each user.

With this level of user tracking and data collection, ByteDance created a near-perfect recommendation system that kept users engaged for long periods.

ByteDance created an AI algorithm that knew its users better than they knew themselves.

By 2014, Toutiao attracted 13 million users, who spent an average of 76 minutes daily on the app, consuming over 1.3 billion articles.

After a year, the ByteDance team decided to expand into video content. In September 2016, they launched Douyin, a video-sharing app built around their AI algorithms.

Again, ByteDance’s AI recommendation algorithm exceeded expectations, expertly recommending videos that hooked users. This addictive content distribution model was wildly successful, helping Douyin rapidly accumulate 100 million users within a year.

Recognizing the potential of their powerful recommendation algorithm, the ByteDance team decided to expand globally. So, they created TikTok, a duplicate of Douyin for users outside of China.

To speed up TikTok’s global reach, ByteDance acquired the lip-syncing app Musically for $1 billion in 2017, merging its 60 million users and millions of videos into TikTok.

With the backing of ByteDance, a $270 billion company, TikTok embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign, spending over $21 billion on global advertising over seven years. Additionally, in 2020, TikTok paid out $200 million to U.S. content creators to encourage more American users to upload on the platform, attracting celebrities like Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, and Jimmy Fallon.

By 2021, TikTok had amassed over 1 billion monthly active users, and this explosive growth drew the attention of the Chinese government, as no other Chinese company had achieved such a global scale outside of China.

The Chinese government began forcefully installing officials on the Board of Directors and in other positions and became increasingly involved in the day-to-day operations of ByteDance.

Due to mounting pressure for control from the Chinese government, Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder, left the company in 2021.

It’s Not a Western Company

Multiple nations around the world have implemented complete bans or limitations on the use of the video-sharing platform TikTok. Among these countries are Canada, Belgium, India, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

The rationale behind these restrictions on TikTok is primarily due to privacy and cybersecurity concerns associated with its parent company, ByteDance, which has ties to the Chinese government.

With the increasing tensions of a cold war between the Western and Chinese governments, Western leaders worry that TikTok has become a surveillance tool for the Chinese Communist Party.

This fear is fuelled by the staggering amount of personal information TikTok collects from its users — ranging from software data such as location, phone numbers, and contacts, to hardware data like device models and mobile network operators. Most alarmingly, TikTok can also access sensors to collect biometric identifiers like faceprints and voiceprints.

To make matters worse, TikTok has been repeatedly caught attempting to circumvent the privacy barriers implemented by Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems to gather even more sensitive user data.

For instance, in 2020, the social media giant was caught bypassing Android’s security protocols to illegally harvest the unique identifiers of millions of users, allowing TikTok to track their internet activities outside the platform without their permission.

It is important to note, however, that multiple other software media platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, have also intentionally circumvented privacy laws for years to collect vast amounts of personal information about their users.

The US Government is more comfortable with American companies spying on American citizens

Contrary to popular belief, the US government isn’t trying to ban TikTok because its content is making Americans less productive and poses a risk to mental health and child safety.

The reason the US government wants to ban TikTok is to prevent the Chinese government from continuously monitoring the lives of millions of American citizens, enabling widespread espionage and undermining national security.

On March 13th, 2024, The US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill that gives TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, about six months to sell the US portion of the video-sharing application to an American company or face an outright ban.

TikTok’s Uncertain Fate

Unfortunately, TikTok has become a sacrificial lamb caught in the escalating tech tensions between the US and China. With suspicions running high that the Chinese government could use TikTok’s troves of user data maliciously, the app’s future in America is unknown.

The bipartisan bill forcing ByteDance to sell off TikTok’s US operations within 6 months or face a ban puts immense pressure on the company. With 170 million American users generating TikTok about $7billion in yearly revenue, the social media giant is looking to take legal actions to avoid having to sell its US assets.

American business moguls like Oracle’s Larry Ellison and former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick are already making moves to potentially purchase TikTok’s US business valued at a staggering $100 billion.

The fate of the bill remains uncertain, as this isn’t the first time the US government has attempted to ban TikTok. In 2020, former US President Donald Trump issued executive orders trying to prohibit the app over national security concerns, but those efforts were blocked in federal courts.

For this bill against TikTok to become binding, a majority of the US Senate must accept it. At the moment, however, multiple senators are not interested in passing the bill.

The entire world is watching what will happen over the coming months because how this situation plays out could set the stage for future digital battles over privacy, data, and national security in our connected world of powerful technologies and applications.

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