The case against the TikTok ban bill

A year ago, I visited TikTok’s U.S. headquarters to preview its new “Transparency Center,” the company’s multibillion-dollar effort to convince the U.S. that it’s a meme factory it’s not. The effort failed. Negotiations with the government have stalled and the company now faces its most serious future threat yet in the United States.

Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that, if passed into law, would force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face an outright ban in the United States. Lawmakers are skeptical of TikTok. Since ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is headquartered in China, they believe that the Chinese government can manipulate TikTok’s algorithm or access its user data through ByteDance employees. But what’s surprising about the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act is that it suddenly seems to have so much bipartisan support.

Unexpectedly, the bipartisan bill passed committee unanimously 50-0 and less than a week later, the full House passed it by a vote of 352-65. Of the dozens of bills seeking to regulate the tech industry in recent years, including two on TikTok, none has gained as much traction.

But the renewed support for banning or forcing the sale of TikTok does not appear to be related to any newly discovered information about TikTok, ByteDance, or the Chinese Communist Party. Instead, lawmakers have essentially been repeating the same concerns raised about the app for years.

One question that comes up often is data access. Like many of its social media peers, TikTok gets a lot of data from its users. This practice has gotten the company into trouble in the past, when it was discovered that many of its users were minors. Many lawmakers view its vast trove of user data as one of the most significant risks posed by TikTok, which they claim could be obtained by Chinese government officials.

“Our bipartisan legislation would protect American social media users by promoting the divestment of apps controlled by foreign adversaries to ensure Americans are protected from digital surveillance and influence the operations of regimes that could weaponize their personal data.” The bill co-sponsors stated.

TikTok has repeatedly denied sharing any data with the Chinese government and said it would not comply if they were asked to do so. However, ByteDance has been caught in the past for mishandling TikTok user data. In 2022, ByteDance employees, including two Chinese employees, accessed the data of journalists who wrote stories critical of the company. There is no evidence that these actions were directed by the Chinese government.

In fact, experts say, the Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act does little to solve the data access problem. Even if the app is banned or controlled by another company, Americans’ personal information will still be readily available from the largely unregulated data brokerage industry.

Data brokers harvest vast troves of Americans’ personal information through a host of apps, websites, credit card companies and other businesses. Currently, there are few restrictions on what data can be collected or who can purchase it. Biden administration officials have warned that China is stealing the data, much of which is more revealing than anything TikTok has collected.

“The data collected about you will almost certainly outlive you, and you won’t actually be able to delete or delete it,” said Justin Cappos, a professor of computer science at New York University and a member of the NYU Center for Cyber ​​Security. Get rid of them.”, told Engadget. “If the United States really wants to solve this problem, the way to do that is not to blame a Chinese social media company and make them the face of the problem. It really needs to be through meaningful data privacy regulations and pursuing [data] Collect and track these data brokers. “

The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would prohibit data brokers from selling Americans’ personal information to “hostile” countries such as China. However, if passed, the law would not address the sale of this material to other entities or the large-scale collection of this material from the outset.

Digital rights and free speech advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have also raised the possibility that a U.S.-imposed ban or sale of TikTok could provide other countries with an excuse to impose similar bans or bans on U.S. social media platforms. limit. The EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups said in a letter to lawmakers who opposed the measure that it would “set an alarming global precedent for excessive government control of social media platforms.”

EFF senior staff attorney David Greene noted that the United States is strongly critical of countries that ban social media apps. “The State Department has been highly critical of countries that have shut down services,” Greene told Engadget, noting that the U.S. government will shut down entire services in 2021. “Shutting down an entire service is an inherently anti-democratic thing to do.”

Shortly before the House vote, intelligence officials held a meeting with members of Congress about TikTok. That led some experts to believe there must be new information about TikTok, but some lawmakers suggested otherwise. “Nothing we heard in today’s classified briefing is unique to TikTok,” Rep. Sara Jacobs told The Washington Post. . “This is something that happens on every social media platform.” Similarly, Rep. Jim Haines, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said TikTok “is largely a potential threat … if Congress takes this threat seriously.” , we’ll start with a federal privacy bill.”

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