“Sociable” is the newest commentary on vital social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
TikTok’s pulling out all of the stops to oppose the sell-off bill proposed within the U.S., which might force its owner ByteDance to sell the app to a U.S. company so as to address potential national security concerns.
TikTok’s latest effort on this front is a new, $2.1 million ad campaign, which goals to showcase the advantages that TikTok provides to U.S. users.
The campaign will likely be aired on T.V. within the U.S., with a selected concentrate on states that face tough battles within the upcoming election.
As explained by CNBC:
“The company has reserved television ad space within the battleground states of Nevada, Montana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, according to data from AdImpact. All five states are represented by vulnerable Senate Democrats, each of whom is running for an additional six-year term.”
The idea is that this may put more pressure on these senators to oppose the TikTok bill, which expands on TikTok’s broader effort to highlight the advantage of the app for U.S. businesses.
Though the premise of those ads is misleading, in that they amplify the suggestion that TikTok could be banned in consequence of the into account bill.
Which isn’t what the bill states.
Under the proposal, TikTok could be forced into U.S. ownership so as to alleviate concerns across the potential influence of foreign adversaries on the American public. With U.S./China tensions increasing on several fronts, the first concern is that TikTok might be used as a propaganda tool to influence U.S. voters, based on the history of Chinese influence operations more broadly, and on TikTok’s own direct links to the C.C.P.
In China, ByteDance works closely with the Chinese Government on content controls and regulations. To be clear, those controls don’t expand to TikTok, which only operates outside of China itself. But again, the history of Chinese influence operations in other nations does suggest that TikTok might be a goal for a similar.
In 2022, for instance, Google disrupted over 50,000 instances of a Chinese influence program called “Dragonbridge” across YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense, while Meta has also detected many instances of Chinese influence operations, with the corporate removing almost 5,000 Facebook profiles linked to one such program in Q3 alone last yr.
Given this, a Chinese-owned app looks like a possible vector for a similar, while previous reports have also suggested that Chinese officials have at the very least attempted to influence trends on TikTok, so as to present a more favorable view of CCP policies.
Investigations have also indicated that tons of of current ByteDance and TikTok employees once worked for Chinese state media.
Given the varied considerations, there does seem to be a case for consideration of a TikTok sell-off push, and again, the U.S. Government continues to clash with China over the war in Ukraine, control of the South China Sea, Taiwan, etc.
There are various reasons that might be behind the new sell-off push, which is being pushed by cybersecurity experts. But again, this just isn’t a ban, as TikTok suggests, it’s a sell-off based on such concerns.
Though the C.C.P. has reportedly signaled that it can not allow a forced sell-off of the app either way, which could end in a full ban. But that’s not what the actual proposal dictates, and TikTok’s continued misleading statements on this front have also reportedly rankled some senators.
Still, TikTok seems determined that that is the easiest way forward to oppose the bill. Though looking for to oppose a bill based in your perceived influence by utilizing that influence to oppose it can also not work within the app’s favor.
The bill could take a while to reach the subsequent stage, and you may expect TikTok to keep pushing to maintain its ownership structure.
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