The Progressive American

The House just passed a de facto ban on TikTok. They missed a massive opportunity

The House of Representatives officials passed the so-called TikTok ban in a vote of 360 to 58. The legislation now goes to the Senate and would require TikTok’s parent company, Byte Dance, to sell the social media app or face the app’s eventual removal from app stores throughout the United States. Supporters of the ban are sure to celebrate, but the truth is that Congress has missed a massive opportunity.

While much of the coverage surrounding TikTok focused on whether or not it will be banned, or if it is even legal to do so, said coverage would’ve been better focused on the way TikTok’s controversial data policies could allow the federal government to regulate social media in general.

Supporters of the ban argue that TikTok’s parent company, Byte Dance, is beholden to the Chinese government and that allowing it to remain means Americans lose their data security. This would hold water if the companies remaining after the ban constantly violate American privacy.

The sad reality is that Americans don’t have data security. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and many more routinely violate American’s privacy. In one instance, Mark Zuckerberg used data gathered on Facebook users, giving it to companies he liked and worked with. In 2022, Snapchat agreed to pay $35 million for illegally collecting users’ biometric data. Instagram, which is owned by Meta, who owns Facebook, regularly documented children under the age of 13 and kept their data without their consent.

Again and again, Americans have had their privacy and their personhood used in the name of corporate profit and greed. Americans face a genuine security threat through social media apps. The focus on TikTok, therefore, could have been an opportunity to expose and rectify the long-standing abuses by social media companies across the board. Had the attention on TikTok been focused on establishing legislation enshrining privacy rights for all Americans, such as in the European Union, Americans could have enjoyed greater freedom and security without worrying about invasive social media apps.

Instead, the House decided to single out TikTok, thanks in part to the influence of Meta lobbyists. In one instance, Facebook hired a GOP firm, known simply as Targeted Victory, to attack TikTok as a threat to the public.

The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz and Drew Harwell reported:

Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.

The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promotingdubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor. These bare-knuckle tactics, long commonplace in the world of politics, have become increasingly noticeable within a tech industry where companies vie for cultural relevance and come at a time when Facebook is under pressure to win back young users.

Employees with the firm, Targeted Victory, worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign portraying the fast-growing app, owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance,as a danger to American children and society, according to internal emails shared with The Washington Post.

These efforts by Facebook and its allies illustrate that far from being a matter of national security, the push for the ban is part of a larger effort by TikTok’s competitors to eliminate a rival, not to protect Americans. Instead of listening to Americans who overwhelmingly support stronger protections for data privacy, the House, and possibly the Senate, has elected to focus on a single app when the entire social media apparatus is the problem.

It is increasingly clear that the government thus far shows no interest in fixing our current situation and even less interest in challenging the social media industry. It is easier for them to focus on one company and throw it to the curb than it is to fix the problem, and thus far, that seems to be the path they have taken.

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References

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Lorenz, Taylor, and Drew Harwell. 2022. “Facebook Paid GOP Firm to Malign TikTok.” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ (April 23, 2024).

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