TikTok: an agent of Chinese propaganda?

America's youngsters "might be about to have more free time on their hands", said The Washington Post. One of their favourite pastimes – scrolling through make-up tutorials, cute animal clips and viral challenges on TikTok – may soon be denied them. 

Last week, the US House of Representatives voted to force the social media app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok to non-Chinese owners or face a ban in the US. Politicians argue that the app, which has more than 150 million users in the US, is a national security risk, because it collects vast quantities of personal data that the company could exploit, and because it could be used to spread Chinese propaganda. If the measure passes the senate – still a big if – President Biden has promised to sign it into law.

Talk about skewed priorities, said Julia Angwin in The New York Times. Polls show that almost three-quarters of Americans want tighter rules on how tech companies use personal data, but only 31% favour a TikTok ban. Forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok to some other tech firm, such as Google or Meta, isn't going to make US users' data any safer. This measure is an act of election-year posturing that offends both free speech principles and due process, said Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason. We should be very wary of "expanding presidential power to restrict Americans' access to tools for getting and disseminating information".

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This is an attack on censorship, not free speech, said Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine. There's "plenty of direct evidence that TikTok's algorithm" follows the political dictates of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2019, leaked documents showed the app "instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong". TikTok claimed it changed those instructions, but suspicions remain. We can't prove it because TikTok conceals its algorithm. The app's sale to a neutral third party would fix the problem. 

It's time for action, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal: US security agencies have warned since 2020 that TikTok is "an espionage tool". With last week's vote, the House finally showed some backbone. "Its members said: You can't harm America without our at least trying to resist. They signalled to China that it can't bank forever on America's stupidity and carelessness."