Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Inside the US government’s battle to ban TikTok”.
Tick Tock creators from all over the country flew into Washington DC this past March, looking to influence a new type of audience. Congress contact your representatives and let them know how important this app is. For more than three years, the US government has been threatening to crack down on Tick Tock, an app that has top download charts and become a powerful force driving American culture. Tonight: Tick Tock around the hot seat as Washington debates, whether to ban Tick Tock over National Security concerns, while Tick Tock isn’t too different from Instagram or YouTube. It’S the app’s parent company Beijing based bite, dance bite, dance, bite, dance that spooked lawmakers most over the last few years. Bite dance workers in China have reportedly accessed data from American journalists while at the same time, U.S China relations have strained and tick.
Tock’S popularity has made it the poster child for anti-china policy, but with millions of Americans using the app for entertainment and also to support their businesses, a nationwide band could have devastating consequences so to despite this mounting pressure, some Republicans and Democrats are calling on their colleagues To consider what a ban could mean for free speech on the internet, we’re here in DC to see if Congress is really heading the direction of a total ban is the clock ticking on Tick Tock? This is your status update. Foreign future in the US has been on Shaky Ground for years. So really, why is this process needed now with Tick Tock? What was it about? One of the Geniuses of tick tock is every time you interact with that app.
It learns more about you, it collects more data, it knows what you like, sometimes before you know what you like Senator Mark Warner chairs, the Senate intelligence committee, one of the few Congressional panels to regularly receive classified national security briefings. I’M very concerned the Communist Party in China can say: no. We want all that data about all those Americans, potentially spy upon people potentially use it against. You blackmail.
You name the possible uses that a Communist Party authoritarian regime could use if they have that much data, not just on Americans, but people all around the world that are using this app earlier this year he introduced the restrict act, a bill that would allow for the Secretary of Commerce to ban Tick-Tock and other foreign technologies that the government deems a risk to U.S security, China in 2017 changed all their laws and said any Chinese company. Their top obligation was not their customers, not their shareholders, but the Communist party. So the Communist Party can ask for your data, ask for any information from any Chinese company. This isn’t the first time the government has tried to ban Tick, Tock we’re looking at Tick Tock. We may be banning Tick Tock. We may be doing some other things or a couple of options.
Former president Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2020, Banning it and other chinese-affiliated Technologies, but several judges blocked the order. Saying Trump had overstepped his power. In 2021, the Biden Administration took a new Tack and sought a compromise with Tick Tock to avoid a future ban. Well, it turns out the clock: won’t stop for Tick-Tock President Biden assigned a new executive order, voiding a trump-era decision things looked promising until Chinese bite dance employees were caught using Tick-Tock data to track the locations of two American journalists critical of the company.
So in March the Biden registration reportedly gave Tick Tock an ultimatum, find an American owner or be banned and Warner introduced. His restrict act which would give the government oversight on Tech from six adversarial countries, including Russia and China. So we said, let’s have a bill that will give the Secretary of Commerce a series of new tools, powers to say if there is a foreign technology that creates a national security issue from those six countries I mentioned, the Secretary of Commerce could go from anything from Limiting that application or requiring divestiture uh away from say a Chinese company all the way up to it, including Banning more than two dozen Senators have signed on in support of the bill. Even the White House is behind it, arguing that it’s the best legislative solution, but it’s not the only Bill. Tick Tock has to worry about Congressional Republicans have introduced similar measures leaving out the middleman. The Secretary of Commerce, these bills direct President Biden to ban the app outright, but for the first time some lawmakers have teamed up with tick-tockers to fight against a ban. Tick-Tock as a platform has created a community and a space for free speech is also a place where five million small businesses are selling their products and services and making a living the day before Tick. Tock CEO shozuchu was set to appear before the house, Energy and Commerce Committee.
Three Democrats joined nearly two dozen Tick Tock creators outside of the U.S Capitol for a rally: tick tock’s, most influential lobbyists ended up being the creators themselves. Tick tock’s Community has become an important part of my life and has helped me connect with people from all walks of life. Tick Tock has really been a game changer. For me, it’s allowed me to reach new audiences. Millions of people – tick tock, had flown the creators into DC to show lawmakers how the app had impacted their lives.
What do I do that? I do I give you the news, I’m a mental health Advocate. First and foremost, I use tick tock as a tool to democratize mental health, education and resources. So I do a lot of Comedy content, but I do plus size and transgender activism as well. So I use superheroes and comic books for social, emotional learning and mental health for young people.
So I wanted Congress to see that there are people to tick tock, that this is the face of tick tock and that if you were to ban Tick-Tock, you would annihilate an entire Community, but to representative Jamal Bowman from New York and the handful of other lawmakers. Who disapprove of a ban? Do not ban Tick Tock? We need it. Consider me an ally.
The government’s attacks against the app amount to xenophobic, saber rattling in a disregard for the harms perpetrated by American social media platforms. Let’S have a broader, more honest conversation about social media and, let’s not scapego Tick Tock, because they happen to be owned by a Chinese organization. In this time of heightened xenophobia, sense covert on March 23rd.
All eyes were on Tick. Tock CEO shows his shoe as he testified before the house, Energy and Commerce Committee in an attempt to demystify the app’s security practices. Our witness today is Mr Sho Chu, Chief Executive Officer of tick tock, you’re recognized for five minutes.
There are more than 150 million Americans who love our platform, and we know we have a responsibility to protect them, which is why I’m making the following commitments to you and to all our users number one. We will keep safety, particularly for teenagers as a top priority. For us number two, we will firewall protected U.S data from unwanted foreign access number three Tech talk will remain a place for free expression and will not be manipulated by any government and fourth, we will be transparent and we will give access to third-party independent monitors to Remain accountable for our commitments, little new information came out of the hearing. Lawmakers seemed entirely disinterested and Chu’s answers, often using their entire five minutes to vent their frustrations rather than receive answers to their questions. If the CCP demanded that bite dance hand over all of the data that they had on user on U.S users in their possession and bite dance refused, I wonder what would happen. You know if there really are a 150 million users in the U.S. This suggests to me that the CCP has a finger on the pulse of almost half our nation’s population. Tick Tock is the spy in Americans Pockets at the end of the day’s events. It was clear. Lawmakers still didn’t fully understand how Tick Tock and platforms like it work. As I understand it, there’s a sister app in China doiken, I’m sorry if I’m butchering the pronounce Asian same things over there Congressman. I’M really glad you asked this question: do you I’m not sure because come on now, you’re, not sure I really am not sure, but most of them were more determined than ever before to ban it.
Mr Chu, you are here because the American people need the truth about the threat Tick Tock poses to our national and personal security. It’S been said: it’s like allowing the Soviet Union the power to produce Saturday morning, cartoons during the Cold War, but much more powerful and much more dangerous. Your platform should be banned, okay for more independent perspectives. On all this, we talked to two civil rights experts. I’M David Green, I’m the civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
My name is Jenna leventoff and I’m a senior policy council at the American civil liberties Union. The concern of the U.S government is that U.S user data might flow to foreign governments than Banning. Tick-Tock is really just a small, is good, do very little to address that problem, because uh many many many online services, including social media services and other services, collect hordes of U.S data and then make that data available to data brokers. Who then sell it on Open markets and among the people who buy it on Open markets? Are foreign governments, including our adversaries? Most anyone can buy large amounts of American data from Brokers whose only real Alliance is with whoever offers them the most money. That means foreign governments intent on harming the U.S, can already access our data, but is there enough evidence showing that Tick Tock is making this problem worse right? I wish the government would come out and say that we’ve done a national security analysis that we’ve we’ve reached.
This inclusion and here’s the reason we’ve reached this conclusion and here’s the information we have and we can’t tell you everything but we’re going to tell you as much as we can. I wish the government would do that, but we don’t get that as far as we know, members of Congress have not received that. If what lawmakers fear most is data security, a broader Bill, protecting user data could fix a lot of the problems. Every tech company has not just Tick Tock. The critics have begun to speculate. Let lawmakers are more concerned with China’s rise as a global superpower than the threats posed by a popular app. I think that Congress has decided that they want to look tough on China and they have made Tick-Tock the poster child for that back in the 50s we saw people come down hard against communism. It was politically popular to stifle speech if it was related to someone who held communist values.
People today don’t look favorably upon the McCarthy era and I think, if we’re looking into the future, people aren’t going to look favorably upon this either under current law. What we have right now, would it even be constitutional to ban an app like Tick Tock? No, absolutely not. It would be a violation of the First Amendment.
Tick Tock does pose a threat to users and the Safety and Security of their data, but so do all social media platforms, the collection, dissemination and use of someone’s sensitive information, their likes their dislikes. The time they spend watching a video can inhab and use to harm individuals in whole communities of people in the past, but without meaningful evidence that Tick Tock has inflicted more harm than Facebook or Instagram. A band could do more to chill free speech on the internet than protect the safety of American users, we’re not just talking about banning Tick Tock.
Here we are talking about setting a precedent for Banning an entire app that people use for protected speech from operating in this country, and it enables it to happen again and again and again beyond the outrage. Lawmakers intent on Banning the app Bowman and others have started. Building a coalition to keep the app online, but even with this newfound support, the next few months will be consequential for tick tock’s future.
If lawmakers are unable to pass a ban before the end of the year, their 2024 re-election campaigns May ruin any chance of getting it done, and it doesn’t look like bite. Dance is ready to give up its ownership to an American company anytime soon. .