A looming April 5 deadline for TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to divest its holdings or be shut down revives a controversial battle. Free speech advocates and millions of American TikTok users who practically have a codependent relationship with the video-sharing app are facing off with national security concerns and impacts on children’s mental health. Will TikTok stay, or will it go?
The controversy over TikTok was spurred by concerns that the Chinese government may spy on or influence Americans, especially youth. Impressionable young people are susceptible to algorithmic manipulation, and TikTok is arguably a threat to their mental health. Yet free speech concerns are legitimate – if Americans want to view Marxist content, that is their liberty. And the nation is still reeling from revelations that the Biden administration coerced censorship on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
These tensions converged in the April 2024 passage of the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACAA), aka the TikTok ban. This bipartisan congressional legislation afforded the popular platform 270 days to divest from Chinese ownership or be indirectly censored by provisions prohibiting US companies from hosting TikTok and other foreign-owned entities that violate its terms. Fines of up to $5,000 per user for violations are intimidating – the app has 170 million US users.