The Chinese Communist Party’s data mining operation on U.S. citizens may have just found an unlikely ally. Despite the passage of legislation in Congress to force the sale of TikTok, president-elect Donald Trump is signaling he may just be the man to save it – along with the Chinese interests it serves.
Under current federal law, TikTok must be sold to a non-Chinese company by January 19, a day before Trump’s inauguration, or face a nationwide ban.
While Trump’s plan to keep the app alive isn’t entirely unexpected – he did campaign on the issue ahead of November – it remains a curious pivot from his stance in 2020. Back then, the Trump-Pence administration rightly took a hardline approach and pushed to ban TikTok outright, or otherwise force its sale to American companies, over national security concerns tied to its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
Trump would do well to heed his past warnings, as well as those of the 352 House members and 79 Senators who voted in April to block this Chinese government-owned app from mining Americans’ personal data and poisoning our youth with harmful content and targeted algorithms.
As the current law states, TikTok doesn’t need to disappear entirely, if it’s sold to American interests which align with the transparency and values we expect. But if Trump blocks the sale, this CCP-controlled app will continue to enjoy unchecked access to the data of 170 million Americans.
No matter who holds the reins of the executive, TikTok remains a national security threat if kept in the hands of our adversaries. The new administration’s tempered stance, which now threatens to reverse the ban, begs the question: what changed, and why is the national security threat any less real today?
To start, GOP donor and ByteDance investor Jeff Yass made his case against the ban to then-presidential nominee Trump ahead of the April Senate vote. Trump then began to argue that a ban would only benefit TikTok’s rival, Meta, which he’s deemed “an enemy of the people” for its collaboration with the Biden campaign during the 2020 election.
TikTok, ever responsive to political pressure, has also adjusted its content moderation strategy and loosened its restrictions on political and social discussions that skew conservative. This shift came just as Trump began embracing TikTok as a campaign tool, with his content racking up over 3 billion views. As the president-elect himself noted in September, “I’m now a big star on TikTok.”
But stardom on a Chinese platform is not without its dangers. TikTok’s algorithms could easily be adjusted to target the president-elect. At the behest of the CCP, ByteDance could flood the feeds of millions of young Americans with messages designed to undercut Trump during his second term, weaponizing the app to interfere directly in U.S. politics.
Not only that, but what the Trump-Pence Administration warned in 2020 still holds true. TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including their internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. The CCP could use this information to track U.S. federal employees, build blackmail dossiers, and conduct corporate espionage. The app even collects the facial profiles of American children.
TikTok is not only a data mine for Chinese authorities, but also a vehicle for propaganda aimed at American youth. A 2022 study by Center for Countering Digital Hate found the app’s algorithms, described as “every parent’s nightmare,” expose kids to harmful content such as suicide, extreme diets, and distorted body images within just minutes of registering with the app. It also pushes gender and sexuality content to minors, allowing trans influencers to encourage exploration of gender identity and even distribute puberty blockers and hormones, all without parental consent. It’s imperative to recognize that ultimately, if the ban is reversed, a foreign adversary would remain in control of millions of our young minds.
TikTok is the Chinese Communist Party’s way to feed our youth toxic propaganda and collect data on American users. This threat has been clear for years. The incoming administration should not turn a blind eye to it.
The Trump-Pence administration understood the gravity of this issue, calling out China’s growing influence over U.S. citizens through apps like TikTok and vowing to confront the CCP head-on. That resolve, which once rejected China’s propaganda machine outright, should not be abandoned just because TikTok has played nice in recent months.
Tim Chapman is the president of Advancing American Freedom
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