“Sociable” is the newest commentary on vital social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
Bad news for TikTok fans, with the U.S. Senate today approving a bill that can force the app to be sold into U.S. ownership or be banned entirely within the region.
The bill, which was initially proposed early last month, and approved by the House of Representatives, was this week repackaged it right into a broader foreign aid push, as a way to hasten its path to a Senate vote. The Senate today voted on that combined proposal, which also includes provisions for military aid in Ukraine and Israel, and humanitarian aid in Gaza.
The final vote on the bill was 79 to 18 in favor.
That signifies that the TikTok ban will now be passed on to U.S. President Joe Biden for his approval, and Biden has already stated that he’ll sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
Which is predicted to occur tomorrow, meaning that TikTok might be forced right into a sale, as a way to distance itself from its Chinese ownership, and the danger of the app getting used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
That’s seemingly the first concern amongst U.S. officials, with the secondary issue being the transfer of U.S. user data back to China, which is, reportedly, still happening, despite TikTok’s assurances that it’s a completely separate entity. But clearly, the corporate’s pledges and commitments weren’t enough, which also included a billion dollar plan to maneuver all U.S. user data to an American-based data center.
Despite this, TikTok is now going to be forced right into a sell-off either way.
It’s difficult to evaluate the total scope of risk on this case, because while U.S. Senators have been briefed on the matter by various cybersecurity experts, not rather a lot has been shared with the general public as to the specifics of how TikTok could possibly be used as a vector for Chinese influence.
The primary impetus of the bill is to address concerns across the “potential influence of foreign adversaries on the American public.” With U.S./China tensions increasing on several fronts, the first point of contention here is that TikTok, theoretically or not, could possibly 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 CCP.
In China, for instance, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance works closely with the Chinese government on content controls and regulations. And while those controls don’t expand to TikTok, which only operates outside of China itself, again, the history of Chinese influence operations in other nations does suggest that TikTok could possibly 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 1 such program in Q3 alone last 12 months. More recently, Microsoft warned that it’s found various Chinese-based groups looking for to influence voters in other nations, including the U.S., through coordinated social media activity.
Factoring in all of this, TikTok does appear to potentially pose a threat, and U.S. Senators have decided that enough is enough, and that TikTok is just too much of a risk to permit, because it currently stands, within the U.S.
So what happens now?
Assuming that Biden does sign the bill as he’s pledged, ByteDance will then be given 9 months to sell TikTok to a U.S.-based owner, or it’ll need to remove the app from the region.
That could possibly be prolonged by an extra 30 days if ByteDance meets the necessities of an appeal, so essentially, TikTok will likely be around till this time next 12 months, in any case, before it could possibly be gone entirely.
And you’ll assume that, inside this time, the parties involved would have the ability to achieve an agreement to maintain the platform running, though a complication could possibly be that the Chinese government has vowed to oppose the forced sell-off, as it might relatively see it banned than bow to what it sees as an overreach.
So possibly, political wrangling could see TikTok actually banned for good. Or it could possibly be sold off to an interested party who may keep it going, in isolation from its Chinese owners.
Would TikTok have the ability to maintain running with ByteDance-owned algorithms? Would it’s as compelling a platform without them?
There are many questions that might be asked in the approaching weeks, if Biden does log out, as expected, shortly.
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