By Ravi Gadasally
TikTok is set to be banned on January 19th, with the Supreme Court upholding the ban. While the law to ban TikTok passed with strong bipartisan support and was signed by President Joe Biden, it is facing backlash from users and President-elect Donald Trump, who had initially pushed for federal action against Chinese ownership of TikTok.
Concerns of American TikTok users' data being protected stem from Chinese laws mandating that Chinese companies cooperate with their national intelligence agencies’ requests. Beyond there being weak data privacy protections for Chinese companies, Buzzfeed uncovered audio tapes from 80 internal TikTok meetings which provide evidence for concerns.
“ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed [non-public data] about US TikTok users,” per the Buzzfeed report.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFCA) that was signed into law on April 24, 2024 prohibits foreign adversary controlled applications from being distributed, maintained, or updated. Affected applications have 270 days to be divested to avoid the ban. TikTok's owner, ByteDance, is explicitly named in the law as a company that develops foreign adversary controlled applications.
As introduced on the House of Representatives floor, the law stated: “To protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications, such as TikTok and any successor application or service and any other application or service developed or provided by ByteDance Ltd. or an entity under the control of ByteDance Ltd.”
The Supreme Court upheld PAFCA in a unanimous decision on the case TikTok v. Garland, in which TikTok sued the United States government on the grounds that PAFCA violated the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment, among other legal rights.
“It is not clear that the Act itself directly regulates protected expressive activity, or conduct with an expressive component,” stated the ruling. “Indeed, the Act does not regulate the creator petitioners at all. And it directly regulates ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok Inc. only through the divestiture requirement.”
Biden has declined to enforce the TikTok ban, leaving enforcement to Trump.
“[Biden believes] TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress," according to a statement issued by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. "Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration."
Trump has voiced his intent to save TikTok from being banned, with The Washington Post reporting that Trump is considering issuing an executive order to halt the bill for 60-90 days. Last month, Trump had asked the Supreme Court to stay PAFCA so his administration could work out a deal to keep TikTok available to Americans - to which the Supreme Court did not agree. Trump could also declare TikTok in accordance with PAFCA according to University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein, but such a move could be challenged in court.
His nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has declined to state that she would enforce a ban on TikTok. Reasons considered for Trump's flip-flop on this issue have included whether he was playing to the youth vote or that one of his megadonors in the 2024 campaign, Jeff Yass, has a large stake in ByteDance, but his concrete reasoning remains largely unclear beyond statements he has made on Truth Social.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in March 2024. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”
UCLA undergrads have varying opinions on this issue, but some have voiced concern that banning TikTok will repress certain political opinions.
“I honestly am pretty mixed about TikTok, I know there’s a big concern with Chinese data scraping but it’s not like they’re collecting any real important information,” said freshman Biology and Atmospheric Sciences student James Lee-South. “Also the people on TikTok are very Pro-Palestine and I wonder how much of this sudden ban is just a veiled attempt to suppress criticism of Israel,” the student continued.
With the TikTok ban looming, some users and content creators have begun migrating to the Chinese app Xiaohongshu, which means “little red book,” raising concerns that TikTok could in part be replaced by another Chinese company.
“I don't use TikTok but I think it's pretty funny that they banned it because the owners report to China but all the users just end up going to little red book,” said freshman Psychobiology student Jeremy Tran.