U.S. Bill Targets TikTok’s Future and Threatens the Open Web

More than a decade ago, the world watched as China shut off its internet. Beijing blocked Twitter and Facebook in 2009, and in recent years, the Chinese government has advocated for a vision of “cyber sovereignty,” arguing that the internet must be bound by national borders and subject to the state’s control. While American politicians, activists, and academics alike have rightly criticized China’s claim to cyber sovereignty, many now appear to affirm Beijing’s nationalistic vision of internet governance.

Today, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that will determine the future of TikTok in the United States. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will force the Beijing-based owner Bytedance to divest its control of TikTok—a platform utilized by over 170 million Americans—or face a nationwide ban in the United States. If passed, the bill will be a hollow victory at best.

The moral panic around TikTok, shared by many American proponents of the ban, is not dissimilar to the paranoia I’ve seen in China. Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted: “Communist China owning TikTok’s algorithm is the gateway to spying on Americans and manipulating public opinion in the United States” Rubio’s tweets, and similar calls from others, echo the Chinese government’s case for banning U.S. platforms, such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook, in the name of foreign interference.

Make no mistake: It’s naïve to overlook TikTok’s problems. The app raises many legitimate questions concerning privacy, parental controls, and mental health. Like its U.S. competitors, TikTok is vulnerable to disinformation campaigns and electoral manipulation.

Yet these concerns are neither peculiar to TikTok, nor to Chinese-owned platforms at large. National security concerns arise out of unsafe data practices, as demonstrated by the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. Additionally, Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) has significant business interests in China, where Tesla manufactures its electric vehicles; and the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is among the platform’s largest investors. Is the United States committed to prohibiting firms that are subject to foreign government pressure—however that’s defined—from operating internet platforms altogether? Doing so will not only require a set of wealth transparency legislations but also risk curtailing innovation at home.

Viewing the concerns with TikTok as uniquely “Chinese” problems ignores the urgent need for broader, more comprehensive legislation on election integrity, child protection, algorithmic transparency, and data privacy. Moreover, passing legislation that could lead to a ban of the app risks treating U.S. corporations—which have lobbied for campaigns against TikTok—as agents of American competitiveness, rather than entities to be scrutinized under the same lens.

The bill, which specifically targets TikTok, as it currently stands, will not bring us closer to fixing U.S. issues with data privacy and security. Rather, it will seemingly legitimize the Chinese model of internet governance, which sees foreign platforms as inherent threats to political stability. To fully address the stated concerns of the TikTok bill, Congress should prioritize federal privacy laws such as the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, introduced in 2022, and further limitations on data brokers.

While proponents of the bill have argued that by offering Bytedance the choice to sell TikTok to an American owner, the bill “does not ban TikTok” and doesn’t violate freedom of speech, the American Civil Liberties Union thinks that view is mistaken. Facebook may be permitted to operate in China if they allow a local partner to own a majority stake. Does Beijing then get to claim that its internet is, in fact, free? Will the U.S. if it does the same to TikTok?

Today, the internet is less open globally, and that’s thanks to moves made by both authoritarian governments as well as democracies. Aside from efforts of the Chinese and Russian governments, India has banned 59 mobile apps in 2020 in the name of “sovereignty and integrity” and “security of state.” Many of them are Chinese—not just TikTok but also music players and web browsers. As Tim Hwang and I have argued before, the United States has every reason to defend the open web. The response to national security threats should be calculated and proportionate. While Beijing restricts free speech, creativity, and channels of expression, the United States should not model itself after China’s paranoia. Instead, the United States should rather take an approach that works to remedy the concerns around TikTok, and even its U.S. competitors, without stripping Americans of their internet freedoms.

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