The TikTok Ban Reveals a Deep Problem in America’s Political Discourse
As many of you know, on Wednesday, the House voted overwhelmingly to force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the wildly popular social media app to a company unaffiliated with Communist China or face a complete ban in the United States. What many of you may not know is that TikTok has launched an aggressive campaign to kill the legislation.
TikTok has deployed the standard strategy to kill this bill in the Senate, sending lobbyists and executives to each Senator’s office in an attempt to sway legislators. However, expensive lobbyists aren’t the only tool in TikTok’s utility belt. They also have legions of dedicated users who often spend hours browsing their platform or producing content. This week, TikTok users received a notification that Congress was trying to ban the app and prompted users to call their congressman.
This was no amateur operation. TikTok wasn’t just hoping their users would look up their member of Congress, find the office contact number, and dial. Instead, ByteDance used their customer’s current location to identify their congressional district and prompted them to call their representative directly from the app. Over the past few days, offices were inundated with calls asking Congress not to move forward with the legislation.
Usually these calls are answered exclusively by interns and front office assistants. However, when the call volume is this high, it’s an all-hands-on-deck operation. This week, I answered no less than 50 calls from TikTok users. Although a disproportionate percentage of callers were young (I don’t think anyone under the age of 50 actually calls their member of Congress under normal circumstances), they were not exclusively young. People of all ages and backgrounds seemed eager to take action.
I would not say I am a regular TikTok user. However, as a man who just entered his thirties, I am no stranger to the app. Like most TikTok users, I began using the app during the COVID-19 lockdowns to satiate my desire for social interaction. However, reports that the company was based out of Beijing were concerning to me. Of course, ByteDance will tell you that they are not affiliated with the Communist Party in any way and that they don’t share any user data with the Chinese intelligence community. This claim cannot be trusted. The CCP can decide to take advantage of TikTok at any moment, as they can with any China-based company when the mood strikes their leaders. Just ask Jack Ma of Alibaba how much respect China has for free enterprise.
Concerns about privacy and the influence of an authoritarian communist regime led me to look for other platforms during the COVID pandemic. Thankfully, Instagram, which is owned by Meta, offers a nearly identical product, albeit with slightly less engaging content. I felt this was the perfect solution. Instagram would still provide me with a steady stream of divisive and engaging content. But the added bonus was that my data would be stored in a server at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley rather than at the Ministry of State Security in Beijing.
As I answered phones over the past week, I reminded our callers that Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat have all added new features that offer almost the exact same platform as TikTok. I wondered why they wouldn’t simply create an account on one of these American-owned apps to protect their personal data from our nation’s chief geopolitical adversary. The response I received from most callers left me utterly despondent.
As I mentioned previously, the perspectives of our callers were incredibly diverse. We received calls from both liberals and conservatives telling us not to ban TikTok in the United States. When I reminded one conservative-minded caller that Communist China has an incredible influence over America’s young people through this app, he replied, “It’s better than Biden and his woke buddies influencing our kids.”
This same sentiment was echoed by our liberal callers. It’s no secret that Democrats are…uncomfortable…with Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter/X. Many callers pointed out that Musk’s unwillingness to censor controversial conservative voices on Twitter has made the platform significantly more divisive. Liberal callers made their perspective very clear. They were just as concerned about the influence of Musk as they were about Xi Jinping. One caller even noted that Donald Trump is looking increasingly strong in the presidential race. This person was very concerned about what a potential second Trump administration could do with his personal data.
I was floored. It’s no secret that the U.S. intelligence community is tracking our online activity and collecting our data, but I could never imagine being more concerned about our own government than a communist regime with no tolerance for free speech.
Members of Congress and parents across the country are concerned about the corrosive effect that TikTok will have on each of us, particularly our young people. They are concerned that the Chinese Communist Party will become the chief filter through which we receive all our online content. They are concerned this will undermine America’s social cohesion to China’s advantage.
The sad truth is – this already happened.
In today’s America, there is no greater enemy than the other party. Americans have ceased to see those who disagree with them as people with different values or needs – they see them as people with corrupted values and nefarious intentions. We are so desperate to defeat our perceived enemies within the country that we’ve all convinced ourselves that those who disagree with us are more evil than the world’s most authoritarian governments.
It’s difficult to tell who started tearing this nation apart. In 2016, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that Russia attempted to undermine our political process by creating confusion and supporting President Trump. There is also evidence suggesting that China and North Korea were involved in sowing discord in the 2020 election. The outcome of these elections doesn’t matter to our adversaries. For Xi and Putin, it doesn’t matter if Trump, Clinton, or Biden gets elected if at the end of the day we’ve become more bitter and self-loathing than we were before.
Personally, I believe the forces of disunity were sewn at home. For decades, there have been voices in the public square advocating against unity, compromise, and mutual respect. Instead, these voices would lead you to believe that your neighbors aren’t just people who disagree with you, they are your enemies. All it took was someone to come along and give those voices a pedestal.
China did not have to go to war to destabilize our once-strong democracy. They simply amplified the most divisive and derivative voices in our country and let them do the work. In other words, when it comes to the downfall of American democracy, the call is coming from inside the house. The question is, are we strong enough to change course? Will each of us begin to consider why someone’s background or personal needs might drive them to have a different political perspective, or will we allow ourselves to give in to our most reductive thoughts and assume that they are simply bad people who need to be silenced?