{"id":26,"date":"2022-12-13T18:41:43","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T18:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/trumps-tiktok-ban-might-have-been-right-after-all\/"},"modified":"2022-12-13T18:41:43","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T18:41:43","slug":"trumps-tiktok-ban-might-have-been-right-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/trumps-tiktok-ban-might-have-been-right-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s TikTok ban might have been right after all"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Here\u2019s something you rarely hear a Democratic senator say: \u201cDonald Trump was right.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s what Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is saying now, and it\u2019s all because of TikTok, the popular video app that Trump tried to ban in the waning months of his presidency. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs painful as it is for me to say, if Donald Trump was right and we could\u2019ve taken action then, that\u2019d have been a heck of a lot easier than trying to take action in November of 2022,\u201d Warner told Recode. \u201cThe sooner we bite the bullet, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his problems with TikTok are more than shared by his Republican counterpart, committee vice chair Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Rubio\u2019s been sounding the alarm about TikTok since 2019 \u2014 before Trump, even \u2014 and he\u2019s still doing it now. He recently co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post that called for the app to be banned. In December, he introduced a bipartisan bill with Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) that would do just that: the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP) Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company,\u201d Rubio said in a statement. \u201cIt is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.\u201d <\/p>\n

The chances that the new ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act will pass and become law in the few weeks remaining in this congressional session are slim to none. But Rubio is likely to reintroduce it in the next session, where TikTok appears to be Congress\u2019s next Big Tech target. The Big Tech antitrust bills that once seemed sure to pass this year are likely dead. It\u2019s uncertain if and how they\u2019ll be revived in the next Congress. There\u2019s also the fact that some of those Big Tech companies aren\u2019t quite so big anymore, which makes it harder to make the argument that they\u2019re hugely powerful and dominant companies that can only be curbed through targeted legislation. But the TikTok threat is something both sides might be able to agree on.<\/p>\n

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Sen. Mark Warner (left) and Sen. Marco Rubio (right) head up the Senate Intelligence Committee. Neither of them are big fans of TikTok.<\/figcaption>Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n

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That scrutiny isn\u2019t limited to the legislative branch. The Biden administration hasn\u2019t gone as far as its predecessor, but this past September, it issued an executive order that seems very much aimed at the company. Meanwhile, Republican Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr can\u2019t stop talking about the dangers he believes TikTok poses, calling for Google and Apple to ban it from their app stores and saying he thinks the government should ban TikTok (Carr doesn\u2019t have the authority to order any of those things, however). Certain parts of the government \u2014 including branches of the military \u2014 have already banned workers from having TikTok on their phones at all.<\/p>\n

But TikTok\u2019s most pressing concern right now is probably the investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency group that reviews foreign investments in the United States for national security issues. CFIUS is looking at ByteDance\u2019s acquisition of Musical.ly, which it then combined with its own TikTok app to become what it is today. TikTok is reportedly trying to reach an agreement with CFIUS that would allow it to continue to operate in the US, but it hasn\u2019t gotten there yet. CFIUS can and has blocked or unwound acquisitions before. It could do it again. So even though Trump is no longer in power, TikTok still faces the same threat of being kicked out of the United States or forced to be divested from its parent company.<\/p>\n

What did TikTok do to incur the wrath of DC? It all comes down to data and China.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the entity that hacked into Equifax and literally collected information on close to 150 million Americans,\u201d Warner said. \u201cIn a world where the analogy is \u2018data is the new oil,\u2019 we should be concerned about all this data about American citizens ending up in the hands of the Communist Party of China.\u201d<\/p>\n

The TikTok problem<\/h3>\n

In many ways, it\u2019s a great time to be TikTok. One of the most popular apps in the world, TikTok had more than 1 billion users as of September 2021 (the most recent numbers TikTok has released). The app that was once used primarily for making music videos has become a whole lot more. Some users see it as a news source, a community, and even a search engine. Its ad business is growing steadily. It\u2019s trying to make moves into music streaming, virtual reality, and shopping. If what its CEOs have to say is to be believed, Silicon Valley sees TikTok as a real competitive threat.<\/p>\n

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