Myo Thiha 

Opinions Editor 

Photo credit: Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images 

On Wednesday, March 13, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act with unusual bipartisan support, resulting in 352 votes in favor to 65 against. The bill gave ByteDance, the owner of social media platform TikTok, an ultimatum: either sell the video app to another buyer or face a nationwide ban. The proposed prohibition over TikTok is due to fears of U.S. legislators that the Chinese Communist Party controls ByteDance and has used the app to collect private information and data from U.S. users.   

My initial frustration with this bill’s passing was due to the speed and enthusiasm with which it was proposed and passed. The bill was introduced on March 5 and passed a week later despite the many issues that should have been prioritized, such as gun control, abortion access, or police reform. The swiftness with which this bill passed shows the skewed priorities that lead to urgency among lawmakers.   

This bill’s framing as “protecting” Americans against foreign adversaries comes down to who can access private information. If user privacy were the sole issue, social media platforms like Facebook or companies like Apple or Google would already be banned over their documented histories of collecting and selling user data. After extensive security briefings, Representative Sara Jacobs of California told the Associated Press that TikTok’s user privacy practices occur on every social media platform.  

There have also been no findings that the Chinese government has access to user privacy. TikTok’s algorithm is presented as problematic because it is foreign. U.S. lawmakers believe that the anxieties will end by forcing the sale of the app to an American company that will create an algorithm perceived as friendly. Lost in this sentiment is the fact that domestic algorithms are responsible for developing and spreading White nationalist sentiments and incel culture that create violent and unsafe situations.  

The anxiety about TikTok seems to stem from a xenophobic fear of the Communist Party’s influence on young Americans. Many articles about the new bill reference an algorithm designed by the Chinese company that lawmakers have deemed problematic, claiming that TikTok accounts can run propaganda that will interfere with the upcoming election. Russian trolls and bot accounts on Facebook interfered with the electorate’s sensibilities in the 2016 election, thereby influencing the election itself, but Facebook never faced the same consequences.   

In his article, Anthony Goldbloom blames the TikTok algorithm for the rise of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. Goldbloom argues that the TikTok algorithm decides what circulates and what doesn’t. He compares the numbers of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli hashtags, the former far outweighing the latter. Goldbloom creates a fallacy that attributes Palestinian support to a shady algorithm, not to more people on TikTok wanting to be pro-Palestinian. Goldbloom also argues that Israeli support doesn’t exist because the algorithm is against it, not because young people are opposed to the Israeli government’s approach to the conflict.  

In another article by The New York Times, reporter Kevin Roose calls TikTok its own worst enemy because the company encouraged users to flood their representatives’ offices with calls to “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.” What Roose is criticizing as a mistake by TikTok is the process of democracy in action. Americans have the constitutional right to have their voices heard and petition their elected lawmakers. Individuals have the right to make angry calls to their representatives, whose job is to serve the people. Yelling at politicians should be normalized and encouraged if Americans feel they do not have their best interest at heart.  

I do not use TikTok. The app is on my iPhone, but I rarely open it. It idles away next to a Duolingo app that harasses me every morning and a FanDuel sports betting app that will undoubtedly lead me to a gambling debt. The only time I have engaged with TikTok recently was when Lebron stans called Michael Jordan a right-hand merchant who could not go left and dominated a mythologized and overrated 1990s. As someone who does not engage with it, what stands out is the app’s ability to form communities that thrive in organic and inclusive ways. Online communities are essential for people to feel like they belong in a space connected by shared interests or values. TikTok has almost 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., and many rely on TikTok as a source of income. The recent TikTok bill epitomizes the country’s deepest xenophobic anxieties about who gets to design our social media algorithms.