Is TikTok going to be nationalized?

According to the House of Representatives, there’s no question – TikTok poses a threat to democracy. 352 representatives backed a bill on March 13, mandating that ByteDance, the Chinese company behind the video-sharing platform, sell its American arm to U.S. investors or shut it down. Only 65 representatives voted against.

Certainly, the text must still pass the Senate, which does not seem to be in a hurry to examine it, then be promulgated by Joe Biden, who has already announced that he would sign it if it were submitted to him. On April 2, during a telephone interview with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the American president reiterated his concern with regard to TikTok.

What is going to happen next?

The facts

What do Americans have against this platform which has nearly 150 million users in the United States? For Mike Gallagher, the Republican representative behind the bill, TikTok is doubly dangerous. It makes it possible to spy on Americans, in particular by geolocating them and exploiting their data and, even more serious in his eyes, it represents a “propaganda threat”.

“If TikTok continues to be the primary news platform in America, and if the algorithm remains a black box and subject to the control of ByteDance, and by extension that of the Chinese Communist Party, you are placing control of the information – particularly that which young Americans receive – is in the hands of America’s main adversary,” Gallagher declared.

The American administration has, until now, never demonstrated the ideological bias of TikTok’s algorithms. Yet that the threat exists is obvious. In Taiwan, disinformation specialists have no trouble proving that TikTok systematically highlights videos hostile to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in power and known for its opposition to Beijing. If the bill to “Americanize” or ban TikTok were passed, it would obviously be a blow to its Chinese parent company.

The arguments

It’s unclear if the United States would benefit. A clear indication of their dilemma: both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have changed their stance on this issue. When Trump was in the White House, the first had already tried to ban TikTok with a simple decree. Today, aware of the popularity of the platform among young people, the Republican presidential candidate is hostile to the proposal, even though it is supported by many of his supporters.

For his part, Joe Biden canceled Trump’s decree against TikTok in 2021 and supported ByteDance’s proposal to store its American data in the United States. It would be  remarkable if Biden, who just opened an account on TikTok in February to relaunch his campaign among young people, banned the platform in the coming weeks.

More fundamentally, “nationalizing” TikTok would offer a golden argument to the Chinese, who could denounce American hypocrisy when it comes to freedom of expression. Critics of the move denounced China’s efforts to promote itself as a champion of globalization while advocating a model of Internet sovereignty and closing its cyberspace to information and investment from the “strangers”.

The criticism of TikTok still stands. However, implementing a ban could provide Beijing with ammunition to argue that the U.S. operates similarly. Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has already labeled it “ironic” that “a country that promotes itself as a free-market economy employs state power to block certain enterprises.” China has previously utilized Edward Snowden’s disclosures regarding the connections between Silicon Valley giants and U.S. surveillance agencies to highlight the “hypocrisy” of the United States.

Not banning TikTok would be recognizing that there is ultimately more to lose than to gain. It will also show the platform has become too powerful and too popular to be banned from American phones.