The drama surrounding TikTok’s forced divestment from Chinese parent company ByteDance continues with an eleventh-hour bill that would give the company more time to find a deal. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act on Monday, which if passed would grant the company 270 more days to divest or be forced to shut down in the U.S. The Verge earlier reported on the news.
Under a law issued by President Biden in April of this year, TikTok has been given a deadline of January 19th to find a new American owner. The company has heretofore been insistent that it has no interest in splitting from parent company ByteDance, though new reporting suggests that the Chinese government is contemplating a deal to sell TikTok to Elon Musk, which would somehow be worse than banning it outright. After spending $250 million to support Trump’s presidential run, it seems like Musk could get a monumental return on his investment. TikTok quickly denied the report.
TikTok is simultaneously continuing to fight for its survival through the courts, with the Supreme Court having heard oral arguments regarding the initial law last Friday. While TikTok—along with many of its creators—has argued that the ban would be a violation of the First Amendment, the justices seem skeptical. The government has argued that such a ban is necessary on national security grounds and not a violation of free speech rights because it is seeking to regulate a service, not the content created on that service.
In 2020, the gay hookup app Grindr was forced to divest from its Chinese parent company after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) determined the data could be used inappropriately to blackmail or intimidate American users. There is no evidence that TikTok data has been used improperly or that the company has tried to sway users’ views on any subject, another of the reasons the company has pushed back against a ban. TikTok has maintained that the Chinese government has no control over its operations, though the allegation that the Chinese government itself is contemplating a deal for TikTok undermines that thinking.
“TikTok has its problems,” said Sen. Markey on Monday, adding “a TikTok ban would impose serious consequences on millions of Americans who depend on the app for social connections and their economic livelihood. We cannot allow that to happen.” TikTok has more than 170 million monthly users in the United States.
In a case of strange bedfellows, President-elect Trump has entirely flipped from his first term when he attempted to shut down TikTok. He has since created an account on the app that has garnered over 14 million followers and now wants to stop the ban from going into place, at least until he has a chance to find a resolution himself. Trump has cautioned against banning TikTok, saying it would only make Meta more powerful, though it seems he is on good terms with CEO Mark Zuckerberg these days.
At the same time, users of TikTok have been hedging their bets by piling onto another Chinese short-form video app, RedNote, which makes the whole idea of banning TikTok in order to protect against Chinese influence seem futile. The people want TikTok and all of its short-form slop, like a pig at the trough.