By Matthew Li
President Trump made headlines in September for announcing a ban on TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned social media app that allows content creators to produce user-produced short-form videos. The ban would not remove TikTok from the devices of American users, but it would remove the app from various U.S. app stores to prevent future downloads. While the Trump administration and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance have since negotiated a complicated deal to temporarily allow TikTok to continue being used in the United States, the recent victory of President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential Election has put TikTok’s status in the U.S. on uncertain footing. However, the question of why President Trump and many other global leaders have voiced concern over TikTok can be rooted in user privacy, national security issues, and the conduct of the Chinese government. It remains to be seen how the world will handle TikTok’s presence as a social media giant.
TikTok has blown up in popularity in the last few years, with over 2 billion global downloads and nearly 700 million active monthly users as of this July. Along with its increased usership has come increased scrutiny on its privacy standards. TikTok has been accused of illegally storing user data. In February 2019, TikTok was determined to have been storing children’s biometric data without parental consent, violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). TikTok paid $5.7 million to settle the claim but is now being investigated again by the FTC and U.S. Justice Department for continued violations.
At the same time, TikTok has also been seen as a national security concern for many countries. Last year, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton implored the intelligence community to assess TikTok’s risk to national security. Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia has instructed the Department of Home Affairs and its intelligence agencies to investigate the app’s data policies in relation to security threats. Meanwhile, the European Union has launched an investigation in TikTok’s data policies. Ultimately, the main reason TikTok is viewed as a national security threat is that, under China’s national security laws, ByteDance could be forced to hand over TikTok’s data on its users at the whim of the Chinese government.
Some of the backlash against TikTok has also simply been a byproduct response to actions by China. For instance, India used to be TikTok’s largest market outside China. However, after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a border clash with Chinese troops on June 16, tensions between the countries boiled over. Soon after, India imposed bans on over 50 Chinese apps, including TikTok. While the European Union’s data protection watchdogs investigate TikTok’s risk on national security, the relationship between European countries and China has noticeably deteriorated. In recent diplomatic visits, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, has been continuously grilled by Italy and France over diminishing freedoms in Hong Kong and the treatment of Muslim-minority Uyghurs. In Berlin, German officials accused Chinese officials of making threatening comments towards European officials.
While TikTok faces a minor global reckoning (that still has not slowed its growth at all as it continuously increases usership month by month), its status in the U.S. is uncertain. In September, President Trump approved a plan in principle including Oracle and Walmart for ByteDance to sell part of its U.S. business to allow TikTok to continue operating. Since then, however, communication between ByteDance and the Trump administration has been sparse. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) set Nov. 12 as the deadline for ByteDance to “divest any tangible or intangible assets or property, wherever located, used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States.” However, the CFIUS order did not outline what would happen if ByteDance did not comply, and as the deadline came and went with little meaningful communication from the Trump administration, TikTok was forced to file a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit calling for a review of actions by CFIUS. As a result, ByteDance was given an extra week to sell off TikTok’s U.S. operations, with a hard deadline of Dec. 4.
That being said, the future of Tiktok in the U.S. is still not fully determined. Many of the details and nuances of the deal including Oracle and Walmart have not been fully fleshed out. Some wonder how motivated ByteDance will be to meet the deadline or even complete a deal at all considering President Trump will be leaving office in a few months. Others believe President-elect Biden is not as concerned with TikTok’s risk profile under Chinese ownership, although a technology advisor for Biden’s transition team has said it was “too early to say” Biden’s policy plans for TikTok. What we do know, however, is that the election of the Democrat Joe Biden renders any past policy statements and proposals from the Trump administration on the long-term future of TikTok in the U.S. moot and how it will be handled moving forward could change.