I have never used TikTok, the phenomenal video app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, boasting 170 million American users. I have, however, followed on and off the debate over its fate in the United States. Now with the case TikTok, Inc. v. Garland before the Supreme Court and a hearing set for Jan. 10, nine days before the deadline for TikTok to either be sold to a non-Chinese owner or banned, I am paying attention.
As The New York Times characterized it, this is a case of threats to national security vs protection of free speech.
On the national security side is the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” signed into law by President Biden in April 2024. Former Rep. Mike Gallagher, then Republican Chair of the House Select Committee on China, who introduced the bill, described it as a “surgery to remove the cancer at the heart of TikTok,” namely “CCP control of an opaque algorithm that can be used for propaganda purposes.”
Lawmakers believe that owners of TikTok are ultimately beholden to the Communist Party. China’s national security law requires Chinese companies to provide data or cooperate upon request. They worried that TikTok could share American users’ data with the Chinese government or manipulate content on the platform to please Beijing. The Justice Department also pointed out that topics censored in China, such as the Tiananmen massacre or Hong Kong protests, were significantly underrepresented on TikTok.
On the free speech side, TikTok, calls the new law unconstitutional and an effective ban on the speech of its millions of American TikTokers. It also denies that it has ever removed or restricted content at China’s request while maintaining that its U.S. moderation team reviews content out of California. Behind the company is a large rank of supporters, from the American Civil Liberties Union to Electronic Frontier Foundation, from Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University to Cato Institute, which stated, even “propaganda” deserves protection, and that the First Amendment “foreclose(s) public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind.” The New York Times said that the end of TikTok would be a propaganda win for Beijing.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation went further by calling the banning of TikTok wildly unconstitutional and a weakening of press freedom. It stated that the First Amendment forbids the government from banning speech it disagrees with, even if regulators label it foreign propaganda, and that Americans have a First Amendment right to speak using TikTok. It also pointed out that the government hadn’t presented any evidence that TikTok has harmed national security.
I side with free speech.
One. Banning a social media site reminds one of authoritarian China. The notorious Great Firewall blocks American social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), YouTube, and Google to control information flow and censor political content. Should the U.S. be emulating or even competing with China in controlling media?
Two. Foreign propaganda, especially Chinese government propaganda, has been going on in broad daylight in the U.S. without having to hide in algorithms or behind dance or cooking videos on TikTok. There is the Xinhua News Agency with bureaus in major U.S. cities; China Global Television Network (CGTN) broadcasting news and documentaries in the U.S.; People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, with a U.S. edition; and China Daily, published in English, with its U.S. office in New York City.
Three. Just like manufacturing in globalized trade these days, it is a stretch to say TikTok is all Chinese-owned. It was incorporated in California in April 2015, according to CNN. The app, which is not available in China, is owned by TikTok LLC incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in California. At a Congressional hearing last year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew shared that 60% of ByteDance was owned by global institutional investors such as the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group, while 20% by founder Zhang Yiming and 20% by employees around the world. Three of the company’s five board members are Americans.
Four. A government, least of all the American government, should not act like parents, as the Communist Chinese government has behaved towards Chinese citizens throughout its history, thus the nickname “father and mother officials.” The First Amendment allows for Americans to think for themselves, like adults, as a piece in The Atlantic pointed out. Banning TikTok, it continued, “reflect[s] a highly unflattering view of the American public.”
Five. Offering a new twist in the TikTok debate, Sen. Mitch McConnell wrote in an amicus brief supporting the ban, “the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment does not apply to a corporate agent of the Chinese Communist Party.” I wonder how Sen. McConnell explains China’s government-owned media companies operating as Foreign Agents and enjoying free speech in the U.S. Further, what would Sen. McConnell say to Chinese nationals, even members of the Communist Party, working or studying in the United States, who believe that they can criticize the Chinese government from the bastion of free speech and that the U.S. government would counter China’s transnational oppression and protect them under U.S. jurisdiction?
Six. There has been no consistent policy toward dealing with TikTok, only flip flop and political expediency displayed by both President Biden incoming President Trump. In August 2020, President Trump signed an executive order to ban use of TikTok in the U.S. if not sold to an American company. Now, with Jeff Yass, a major Republican donor with significant financial ties to ByteDance, Trump is singing a different tune, asking the court to pause the law beyond the deadline to give him the opportunity to pursue a political resolution. President Biden, on the other hand, postponed and then halted the TikTok case when he took office in early 2021. Then last April, he signed the law banning TikTok.
All in all, I say don’t ban TikTok, don’t be like China, and don’t flip flop. Let Americans think for themselves. Let free speech and free press continue to win in the U.S.
I don’t have a yes or no opinion about this issue, but I don’t find the reasoning presented here very compelling.
Free speech – as in First Amendment? I don’t see it. The US might need to regulate content on a platform, and that seems very close to abridging free speech, but banning the platform altogether is not. No one guarantees your right to have a public access cable channel or whatever might be your accustomed choice of political speech medium.
Official or overtly national Chinese media aren’t relevant to the point. They don’t have the opportunity to surreptitiously propagandize viewers, because they can’t surreptitiously do anything – the flag is pasted right on their foreheads. Tiktok isn’t Chinese? What is ByteDance?
I’d be happy to see it gone because it looks incredibly insidious to me, but not just because it’s controlled by an enemy of the free world, and as long as we don’t really have the intention to stamp out every instance of this kind of social media, maybe that isn’t much of an argument.