Front Burner - Will America really ban TikTok?

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill that could lead to the forced sale or nationwide ban of TikTok in the U.S. To become law, the bill still needs to pass the U.S. Senate, and that’s not guaranteed.All of this has massive implications for the social media platform’s 170 million users in the U.S, and millions more around the world, including here in Canada.Today, NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn on the arguments for and against the bill, how realistic a forced sale or ban would be, and what all this might mean for TikTok’s users.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker in for Jamie Poisson. One week ago, when TikTok users in the U.S. opened up the app on their phones, they weren't greeted by the usual For You page. You know what's going down when you get this notification from TikTok. Instead, they were presented with a request directly from the company. Users were asked to phone their local representatives to, quote,

stop a TikTok shutdown. There was even a button to help them make the call, to stop a bill that would either force the Chinese tech giant ByteDance to sell TikTok within 180 days or face a ban in the U.S. And users listened. Lawmakers were flooded with calls. But despite that, that bill was passed yesterday by the U.S. House of Representatives, and it'll now move to the Senate.

In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds being in the affirmative. The rules are suspended. The bill is passed. And without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. The implications, if it becomes law, are massive, including on, because TikTok has 170 million users in the U.S., the content that you and I see on the app. Today, we're going to talk about the arguments for and against the bill, how realistic a ban would be, and what this all might mean for TikTok's users, not just in the U.S., but around the world. NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allen is back on the show to make sense of all of this. He's based in Los Angeles.

Hey, Bobby. Hey. Thanks for being here. So I want to start by quickly going through the arguments for and against this bill. So the people who are pushing for it, what are they saying? Why do they want this to happen? So the lawmakers in Washington who want to ban TikTok say it's a national security threat. And to support their case, they just point to China and they point to national intelligence laws in China, which basically require private businesses to hand over information anytime the Chinese Communist Party requests it. The core concern is the ownership structure. As long as TikTok is owned by ByteDance, and ByteDance is indisputably beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, the risk is that our foremost adversary controls the news in America.

And so the fear here is that TikTok, which is now used by 170 million Americans, will be used as a way to spy on Americans, that the Chinese government can push pro-China propaganda on TikTok, that China can go ahead and censor videos that are not favorable to China's geopolitical position in the world. And this has just created so much animosity across party lines in Washington. I mean, lawmakers can't really agree on anything, but they can agree that they want to put TikTok out of business. And is there evidence at this point that China has used TikTok in this way

when it comes to these national security concerns? Yeah, this is a really important point. And I've been covering this for years now. And it's really frustrating because there is no publicly available information that the proponents of the ban can cite to show that China has actually meddled on TikTok. So it's all theoretical, right? It's this idea that, well, since it's hypothetically possible for China to use TikTok to pursue its agenda, they maybe can do it one day, but there's no actual concrete examples. That said, people in Washington say, well, there is classified information that we have been briefed on that we can't talk about publicly that has helped sort of bolster the case that TikTok is indeed a national security threat. But so far, you know, there's a handful of examples that have been reported in the press of TikTok spying on journalists. Federal prosecutors and the FBI are investigating

TikTok's parent company for possible surveillance of journalists who cover the technology industry. ByteDance, TikTok's parent company. And TikTok pushing pro-China propaganda on the app. But again, that's the app doing it. So private employees of ByteDance and TikTok and not the Chinese government, those two things are separate and sometimes it gets conflated. On Monday, the U.S.'s top intelligence agency put out this yearly assessment of national security threats, and they warned that there were TikTok accounts being run by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government to influence recent U.S. elections. But is that something that's exclusive to TikTok? No. And so this is happening across social media. Chinese influence campaigns have hit Twitter, now X, Facebook. I mean, you name the social media platform this is being seen just across the

social media landscape and that report that that you note is I believe referring to a handful of accounts that are linked to the Chinese propaganda arm that were sort of trying to smear various politicians in the US I looked at that account and none of the videos really got that much traction. I mean, virality on TikTok is so relative because it's such a vast, vast platform. But no, that's not something that's specific to TikTok. You're seeing Chinese influence campaigns all across the Internet and, you know, proponents of, you know, keeping TikTok in business. And when you talk to the officials at TikTok, they say they're being unfairly singled

out and that a lot of what is driving the push to put them out of business is xenophobic, anti-Chinese sentiment. I mean, that's something that you hear a lot, that it's unfair. They say that they're being targeted for something that all social media platforms are dealing with. Yeah, and that's something that a Montana judge also said when he was ruling on this, too, right? When there was an attempt to ban TikTok in that state. Yeah, exactly. Recently, the state of Montana here in the U.S. became the first to try to put TikTok out of business within the boundaries of the state. to try to put TikTok out of business within the boundaries of the state. The state had argued that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese mega startup ByteDance,

could be used to spy on or indoctrinate citizens. The judge ruling in favor of TikTok on First Amendment grounds, essentially saying TikTok has a right to exist as a business and consumers have a right to use it, and suggesting that the Montana ban was targeted more at China than at protecting consumers. And the judge swiftly dismissed it and not only said, is this a violation of free speech for all the users of TikTok? But he even specifically said that it sure does look like this has a whiff of of anti sentiment. That seems to be driving it. So, okay, so those are the arguments in favor of the bill, but there's also been a lot of opposition to it, including from users who are obviously angry about this.

Last week, TikTok launched this campaign asking its users to call their members of Congress about it. And it says, stop a TikTok ban. Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok. Speak up now before your government strips 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country,

and deny artists an audience. Let Congress know what TikTok means for you and tell them to vote no. Congresswoman Mary Millers, I have a second. I'll help you. Hi, I am a citizen of Illinois' 15th District. Okay, this is just a request for her to vote no on H.R. 7521, the Protecting America from Foreign Adversaries Act, which would essentially take away my right to express freely in spaces not controlled by the government. Okay, I did it. I called Congress. It got a lot of response. A lot of lawmakers, staff members have been saying online that they were completely inundated

by calls. What are opponents to the bill saying and what's their argument? Yeah, the opponents say this is an egregious violation of the free speech of users. They say the government has no place to be in the business of putting an entire social media authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party, but putting a social media platform out of business sure does look kind of authoritarian, right? So, yeah, people are concerned about their free speech being muzzled. People are concerned about their political beliefs and their sharing of political opinions, the ability to do that sort of disappearing if TikTok is put under. Let's talk about what the bill is actually suggesting on a practical sense.

So if it becomes law, ByteDance would be given this ultimatum to either sell TikTok or face a ban in the U.S. And let's maybe talk through those scenarios. So what could ByteDance selling TikTok actually look like? Like who would who would buy it? could ByteDance selling TikTok actually look like? Who would buy it? So ByteDance is one of the most valuable private companies in the world. There's only a handful of tech companies that have the cash to afford to buy ByteDance. And we're talking Google, we're talking Meta, and that immediately raises concerns about antitrust, about the consolidation of power, about the worries that tech companies in the U.S. already are monopolistic. So this would even sort of amplify that concern. you know, a specific U.S. tech company acquiring it, then, yeah, in six months it would be put out of business.

And we could talk about what that would look like. But six months, I mean, I cover Silicon Valley. Six months is not a lot of time to try to find a buyer, a group of buyers to purchase this huge, sweeping, you know, globally dominant tech platform. That's just not a lot of time in terms of how these tech deals usually go down. dominant tech platform. That's just not a lot of time in terms of how these tech deals usually go down. Yeah. So it sounds like this solution that they're proposing isn't actually as simple as it sounds. Could ByteDance establish a U.S.-owned TikTok, like independent of their Chinese holdings? You know, they have. They have a headquarters here in Los Angeles where I am based, and they have partnered with this Austin-based tech company called Oracle, and it to them. They can review it. They audit it. They have complete custody of it. And TikTok says there is a strict data firewall between Project Texas, so Americans' TikTok user data, and Beijing. TikTok has presented this to the U.S. government

and said, look, we have a U.S. subsidiary. We have an American tech company. That's our partner. China is not going to have the ability to get Americans user data. And lawmakers have looked at that and said, we're not interested, not good enough. We want divestiture or nothing. And ByteDance is not interested in divestiture. They don't want to fully divest, so they haven't gone for it. But TikTok has spent, according to them, more than a billion dollars in establishing a firewall and trying to ensure that U.S. user data is safe and that it is walled off from the Chinese government. But lawmakers in Washington just are not mollified. They just continue to be frustrated and very animated by this idea that TikTok needs to be put out of business. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. And you mentioned that ByteDance is unlikely to divest. Talk a bit about that. Why do you think that? Well, over the years, starting with President Trump's attempt to put TikTok out of business. We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening. So we'll see what happens. But is the first time a social media app from China

has become a total behemoth. It has a user experience that every single social media app in the U.S. has tried to copy and it isn't able to. TikTok is the envy of Silicon Valley and China knows that. Because of that, they're not so willing to abandon their pride and joy, which is TikTok, and just give it to an American tech company. TikTok has said unequivocally many times they will not let go of the app and just let an American company gobble it up. They're just not willing to accept it. Right. Yeah, they've been calling it political theater. And they've also been highlighting the things that they've done to address the concerns of the bill's proponents. Right. Can you talk a bit about that? Like, what are some of the steps that they've taken to mitigate these concerns? TikTok says repeatedly when asked, A, they say we have never gotten a request from the Chinese government for any American user data. And B, if we were to get such a request,

we would not comply with it. We would challenge it. Was all of the data collected by TikTok prior to Project Texas shared with the Chinese government pursuant to the national intelligence laws of that country? Senator, we have not been asked for any data by the Chinese government and we have never provided it. But Tamara, that's really complicated because I talked to my colleagues who cover China, and they say there's not really a robust way to challenge a government request in China, meaning if a request did come in, they would have to give it over, and they would have to say publicly that they didn't.

So there is a sort of this real doubt as to whether are they telling the truth? Has this already happened? Can it ever happen? Let's walk through the other scenario here, which is ByteDance refuses to divest, in which case there would be a ban in the U.S. But there have been attempted state bans of the app. And you were tweeting about how those attempts have failed. So how hard would it be to do like a nationwide ban of of this app? Yeah, if you know if you know one thing about the U.S., it's that courts really prize First

Amendment free speech protections. It is extremely difficult to scale back any bit of the foundational freedom that America sees as free speech. The one way you can curtail free speech in the U.S. is if there is a clear and convincing case to be made that there's a national security concern. And this is what lawmakers who want to put TikTok out of business have cited repeatedly. You know, the government would have to make a case to a federal judge, and it would have to survive a long appeals process that the national security case dwarfs any free speech suppression concerns. And all of the constitutional lawyers that I've talked

to who have examined TikTok say this just won't pass muster in courts. So that's their first challenge. The second challenge, though, assuming that they do somehow hit a home run and are able to survive the court process is the technical one. How do you put an app out of business? Right. I mean, on the state level, this was really hectic because if you draw a line around the state of Montana, what about all the bordering states? Similarly, in the U.S., you can prevent Google and Apple from letting Americans download TikTok. But what about the 170 million Americans who already have it? There's no way to take an app off of a phone. So basically, the app would die a slow death. It wouldn't be instant. phone. So basically, the app would die a slow death. It wouldn't be instant. Updates would not hit the app. With time, it would get buggy. With more time, it would get slow. Eventually, it would be unusable. But there's no precedent for putting a social media platform in the U.S. to the ground. There's no way to bring it to heal quickly because it's never been done before. And a lot of technical

experts question whether it's even possible. I. And a lot of technical experts question whether it's even possible. I mean, we see in other places like China, many users, and in Russia, people use VPNs in order to circumvent government blocks on Google and Facebook, etc. You'll see that too in the US. People will find creative, inventive ways to try to use TikTok if there's a so-called ban. But the technical side, right, the technical side of actually banning the thing is something that would take years and years and be really, really complicated. So really quickly, there is bipartisan support for this bill. But interestingly, Donald Trump has been kind of railing against it from the campaign trail.

I could have banned TikTok. I had it banned just about. I could have gotten it done. And they decided not to do it. But as you know, I was at the point where I could have gotten it done if I wanted to. I sort of said, you guys decide, you make that decision because it's a tough decision to make. Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. There's a lot of good and there's a lot

of bad with TikTok. Even though he himself tried to ban it in 2020 and got blocked by the courts, he's now saying that it's a bad idea, that it would only help Meta, which he calls the enemy of the people. He's also said, and this is the part that I was hoping to get out with you, that there are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. So what do you think of that? What would be lost if TikTok is banned? I mean, what would be lost is a giant swath of the Internet. If anyone who uses Instagram knows that they're pushing their TikTok copycat called Reels really hard. And often popular Reels are two day old TikToks.

When that one friend sends you Reels that you saw five months ago on TikTok. a lot of interesting, dynamic, energetic internet culture, whether it's stuff that's funny or if it's a meme or a commentary or whatever, is originating on TikTok. There's a huge creator community on TikTok, and it ends up just powering so many other platforms. So if TikTok disappeared overnight, I really think every other platform is going to feel it. And the Internet's just going to be a less vibrant place. I feel like it's also worth mentioning TikTok's also become the space that people go not just for entertainment, but also for news, for information, for different views on what's happening around the world. And it's probably worth mentioning that, especially as the U.S. is

heading into a pretty serious election, right? Yeah, no, no, absolutely. I mean, TikTok has become a go-to source for how people understand the world, develop their political views, and maybe get informed ahead of an election. And going back to Trump, I mean, he surely knows that, you know, putting his weight behind putting TikTok out of business, which is used by half of America, is political poison right now. So, but yeah, no, silencing this platform at a time when we're going towards a very important critical presidential election is something that concerns both free speech advocates, you know, civil liberties advocates, and just anyone who wants to see young people and people from all backgrounds just engaging with the world in critical ways ahead of an election. And TikTok really is a platform that facilitates

important political conversations every day. Yeah. And it seems like the Biden administration knows that because they were on TikTok to reach younger voters, but they're supporting this bill, which is just it's just kind of ironic. I know that's a funny split between the Biden campaign, which says, well, if we want to reach young people, we got to be on TikTok and the Biden administration, which says, oh, our intelligence community says TikTok's a big concern and a national security threat. Let's let's shut it down. I mean, that that contradiction is pretty striking. Yeah. So so we're talking on Wednesday afternoon. The bill passed in the House this morning, but its future is less certain in the Senate, from what I understand. Where do you see this going

next? My colleagues who cover Congress say there's a pretty good chance that it's never even voted on this year, which would effectively kill it. Who knows, though? I mean, maybe the Senate gets its act together and they do vote on a companion bill. One thing that is really important here is President Biden has already signaled, as you mentioned, that he is willing to sign this bill. So if the Senate side that wasn't as vocal on the House side. But we'll just have to see. But right now, there definitely seems to be some real doubt as to whether this is even going to be voted on this year in the Senate. Okay, Bobby, thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Tamara's all for today. I'm Tamara Kendacker, in for Jamie Poisson.

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