It’s been five years since alarms were sounded over TikTok and Chinese influence, but a U.S. federal appeals court has furthered a potential sale or ban on TikTok. There is a glimmer of hope that the social media app will get a stay of execution, thanks to Donald Trump being reelected as president of the U.S.
Twelve Years in the Making
Four years after ByteDance was founded in China, the company created TikTok, a foreign version of its video-sharing app, Douyin. Three years after that, It began falling to U.S. law when it was determined that it violated child-privacy laws. In January 2020, the Pentagon banned the TikTok app from all military phones.
Just a few months later in 2020, it was alleged that TikTok was still violating child-protection laws. In July of 2020, Donald Trump, as president of the U.S., announced he was considering a ban of TikTok because ByteDance is a Chinese-owned product, and he blamed China for the way it handled COVID. Yet, TikTok had become hugely popular and does have some parental controls.
Later that same year. Trump banned American companies from transacting with TikTok and parent company TikTok, then later demanded that ByteDance divest from TikTok operations in the U.S. Microsoft checked into acquiring TikTok, while the ByteDance and TikTok sued the Trump administration for the executive orders.
A month after Joe Biden took over as president, he postponed legal action against TikTok. Seven months later, TikTok said it had a billion monthly active users, then became the most downloaded app in the world. In 2022, the FCC urged both Apple and Google to ban the TikTok app.
By the end of 2022, the FBI director warned that Chinese officials could manipulate TikTok and influence operations, and the company fired employees who accessed information about journalists. Three years later, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was interviewed by lawmakers regarding the social network’s connection to the Chinese government.
In April of 2024, Biden signed legislation that required ByteDance to sell TikTok within a year. In May of 2024, TikTok and ByteDance sued the U.S. regarding the order to sell or be banned. In June, TikTok was resigned to whatever action the U.S. is going to take, but now at the end of 2024, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld that legislation.
Appeals Court’s Action Against TikTok
With the U.S. federal appeals court’s decision, TikTok could be banned as soon as next month if it doesn’t adhere to the law set in April of 2024. While TikTok had alleged it wasn’t receiving First Amendment rights in the matter, the court disagreed.
The court’s decision mentioned the First Amendment of free speech, then said they were acting to “protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
It appears TikTok and co-plaintiff ByteDance will appeal to the Supreme Court, noting the high court’s reputation of protecting the right to free speech. A TikTok spokesperson said the potential ban was “conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed, and hypothetical information,” and that it would lead to censorship.
While Trump was the one who started action against TikTok, he said during his campaign that he’s against taking action at this time, with Rep. Michael Waltz, his choice for national security adviser, stating that Trump “wants to save TikTok.” Yet, Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s former Treasury Secretary, and Frank McCourt, a billionaire, are known to be working on purchasing TikTok.
The European Union shares the same concerns of the Biden administration and the appeals court. While the U.S. administration is concerned about action the Chinese government could take with information gained through TikTok, the EU said it’s looking into Russia possibly abusing TikTok to influence Romanian elections. Despite these concerns, there are privacy measures you can take on TikTok.
TikTok has always denied the Chinese government could use data gained from the platform to manipulate or spy on U.S. citizens. The social network’s attorneys note that the U.S. has never shown any evidence to support the notion that TikTok data would be used by the Chinese government.
TikTok’s and ByteDance’s attorneys have argued that it wouldn’t be possible to divest the social network commercially or technologically. Additionally, if the U.S. version of TikTok is sold without its algorithm, it would become disconnected from the rest of the content.
If you don’t want to wait for these potential changes to take place, check out these TikTok alternatives.
Image credit: Unsplash
