Based on the questioning of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, the justices sound inclined to uphold a law requiring the Chinese owner of TikTok to either sell the widely popular app or be banned from this country. It seems the correct reading of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
As we’ve said before, we are against a ban on TikTok, as are the 170 million Americans who use it, so the Chinese parent company, ByteDance, better find a buyer before the law kicks in a week from now, on Jan. 19. That assumes that the high court ratifies the law, and puts national security over TikTok’s claims of First Amendment protection.
As several justices pointed out, it’s not what is being said on the TikTok platform, or who is saying, but who owns the platform itself. It doesn’t matter if the subject is cat videos or cookie recipes or even supposed news or straight-up anti-American or pro-China propaganda right from the Politburo. The concern is what the owner of TikTok is doing with the data it collects from the users.
Out of 193 members of the United Nations, there are only four countries in this context that Uncle Sam considers foreign adversaries, a term that was used 40 different times by the lawyers or the justices during Friday’s argument: China, North Korea, Russia and Iran, nasty hostile governments all that like to interfere with U.S. domestic politics.
If TikTok was owned by interests in any other foreign country besides the People’s Republic of China or those three other garden spots, or if it was owned by Americans, there would be no issue. If Beijing-controlled ByteDance insists on keeping ownership of TikTok, it won’t be permitted in the U.S. The ban would then be the doing of ByteDance.
In 2020, when he was in the White House, Donald Trump tried to force a TikTok sale or face a ban by executive action, but it was knocked down, as Congress was required. So last year, the bill was passed with big majorities in the GOP House and the Democratic Senate and then signed by President Biden.
This is not about consumer awareness, as suggested by Justice Sam Alito: “Warning, Communist China is using TikTok to manipulate your thinking and to gather potential blackmail material.” The rationale for the legislation is that Congress doesn’t want despots in North Korea or Russia or Iran or China to have reams of private and personal information on half of the country.
Again, we don’t want TikTok banned. It can be useful or educational or informative or entertaining or a horrible waste of time or push harmful ideas to impressionable youngsters. All of that good and all of that bad can be addressed. But the policymakers have decided that the ultimate power behind TikTok can’t be the government of China. If the Supreme Court agrees, TikTok will need a new owner.
