TikTok’s time may be running out as legislation targeting the social media giant received broad support from Washington’s congressional delegation Wednesday while passing the U.S. House, a move condemned by Seattle-area content creators who depend on TikTok for their livelihood.
Introduced last week, the bill was quickly shepherded through the House of Representatives by backers including U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Spokane Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. McMorris Rodgers argued last week that the Chinese Communist Party may use TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance “to manipulate the American people.”
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would require ByteDance to divest from TikTok’s U.S. operations and other apps within 180 days of the bill’s enactment, or see those apps banned.
TikTok, with global headquarters in Los Angeles and Singapore, has emerged as a leading social media platform among younger users, a demographic Facebook has struggled to capture in the past decade. TikTok’s simple video production tools and responsive algorithm propelled it to prominence never before reached by a non-U.S.-launched social media platform.
ByteDance has established a Seattle-area presence in recent years, leasing office space in Bellevue in 2021 and 2023, to focus on its push into online shopping.
Alissa Montez, a Seattle-based content creator with more than 62,000 followers, would be among those to lose her income if TikTok is banned.
Montez makes content about being independent and confident as a woman. One of Montez’s most popular videos shows her day-to-day life on a given week; posted in February 2023, it has 1.1 million views.
Montez’s main source of income comes from brand deals she gets through her content on TikTok, so the ban is akin to losing her job, she said in an interview. Montez, who turns 27 this month, said she is trying to increase her presence on Instagram and YouTube as a hedge against a TikTok ban.
“I’ll be able to find ways to still pursue social media,” she said. “I’m not neglecting TikTok, but I’ve definitely been focusing on growing my other platforms as well.”
A “de facto ban”?
While President Joe Biden has said he will sign it if it passes, the bill’s prospects in the Senate are unclear.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Commerce Committee, has spoken in opposition to a TikTok-specific bill and has introduced legislation that would create broader protections for social media users’ data.
For its part, ByteDance says its technology makes it impossible for any government, including China’s, to access U.S. user data. In 2021, TikTok launched Project Texas, a $1.5 billion initiative to protect U.S. users’ data, including by storing it in an Oracle cloud infrastructure. TikTok’s U.S. data security team has exclusive access to the data, according to the company.
TikTok described Project Texas as a “comprehensive package of measures with layers of government and independent oversight to ensure that there are no backdoors into TikTok that could be used to manipulate the platform.”
At the crux of the issue isn’t just data collection, but that data could be used to influence the American public, said Alex Bolton, the program manager of the University of Washington’s Tech Policy Lab.
Lawmakers are concerned ByteDance could tweak TikTok’s algorithm to show content that would benefit Chinese government interests and influence public opinion in the U.S., Bolton said.
McMorris Rodgers said TikTok’s access to 177 million U.S. users makes the app a valuable propaganda tool for the CCP, which she said is the U.S.’s “greatest national security threat of our time.” One of the examples of TikTok’s influence on Americans, she said, was the app prompting users to call members of Congress to ask them to vote against the bill.
Among the people who called their representatives is Seattle-based content creator Shey Cerda, who has more than 42,800 followers on the platform. She said the app prompted her to call her representative, Democratic U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal. Otherwise, “your creativity, community and even your income are at risk,” read the TikTok-provided prompt, which Cerda shared with The Seattle Times.
Cerda, 27, said she called Jayapal but never heard back. Lawmakers were reportedly furious with the high volume of calls spurred by TikTok.
Except for Jayapal and U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, all representatives in the Washington congressional delegation voted for the bill, which passed 352-65.
On Wednesday, Cerda posted a TikTok listing all the Washington representatives who voted for the bill. As of Wednesday afternoon, the video had almost 2,600 views.
In a statement, Jayapal said she voted against the legislation because it was rushed and would harm TikTok creators who rely on the app for their livelihoods, many of whom are people of color. The bill, Jayapal said, is a “de facto ban” on TikTok.
A ban would not only affect creators but small businesses that have grown through the platform.
The hashtag SmallBusiness on TikTok has nearly 25 million videos, with content about businesses ranging from bookstores to keychain makers
According to Grace Lindsey, the digital media manager for Seattle-based entertainment company Daydream State, TikTok allows the company to connect with audiences that may not have found the Seattle events otherwise and to run digital ads for ticket sales.
“We were pleasantly surprised by our success with TikTok last year — we were able to tap in with some really devoted fans of our artists, and that can translate directly into excitement and conversions,” said Lindsey, whose employer organizes the yearly Capitol Hill Block Party and other events while operating several live music venues including Neumos.
Lindsey said the company is not particularly worried about a TikTok ban because the digital landscape changes constantly, but it would feel like a lost opportunity.
This is not the first time there have been attempts to block TikTok in the U.S.
Then-President Donald Trump tried in 2020 to ban it in the U.S. through an executive order citing national security concerns. The order was challenged in federal court and never went into effect, though Microsoft briefly considered buying TikTok during the upheaval. Trump now said he opposes a TikTok ban because it would help Facebook owner Meta.
At the time of Trump’s executive order threat, TikTok agreed to protect U.S. data through an alliance with Oracle. In 2022, TikTok began routing all U.S. data to Oracle’s cloud.
In February 2023, Biden banned TikTok from federal devices. Three months later, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill to ban the app in the state, but a federal judge blocked it before it took effect arguing it oversteps state power and “infringes on the constitutional rights of users.”
What’s next
For UW’s Bolton, the bill provides an opportunity to discuss Big Tech’s role in data privacy. He noted that American companies are able to sell U.S. users data to brokers including in China.
The broad latitude afforded to tech companies when it comes to using customer data has long been a source of concern among privacy advocates. Tech companies can sell users’ location data to data brokers, so, for example, users can be targeted with ads related to abortion access if they visit a Planned Parenthood site. But, while states including Washington have enacted protections, Congress has yet to pass significant data collection and sale regulations.
U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Medina, who voted for the TikTok bill, said debates around TikTok, government surveillance and artificial intelligence make it clear how users’ data is vulnerable to collection, misuse and sale.
“We need a strong foundational national privacy law so the federal government can both be proactive and respond faster to emerging privacy and security threats,” DelBene said in a statement on Wednesday after the vote.
The bill is now headed to the Senate and, if passed, would require Biden’s signature. Biden’s campaign has had a TikTok profile since February, and it now has more than 238,000 followers. Trump, who is challenging Biden, does not have a TikTok profile.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement that before voting for the bill, she would like to hear from more experts and discuss different approaches.
“I want to be certain we are weighing the merits of alternative proposals that would deal with the larger issues at hand in a systematic way, while protecting civil liberties, rather than singling out one company,” she said.
Cantwell said she is concerned about foreign adversaries’ “exploitation of Americans’ sensitive data.” After today’s House vote, the Washington Democrat said she will be talking with members of the Senate and House to try to find a path forward that is “constitutional and protects civil liberties.”
Cantwell has been one of the Senate’s leading critics of the House’s TikTok bill, according to a Politico report. As chair of the Commerce Committee, she will have considerable influence over the bill as it moves into the Senate.
In 2023, ByteDance reported $8.7 million in lobbying expenditures, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit research group tracking money in U.S. politics. Cantwell’s former deputy chief of staff and acting legislative director Rosemary Gutierrez is lobbying on behalf of TikTok, according to Politico.
Montez, the Seattle influencer, has seen her following on Instagram grow, but it hasn’t reached the same levels of her TikTok. The fewer followers you have, the less money you make in brand deals, she said.
“If TikTok gets banned, I will be very stressed out. I will figure it out and everything will be OK,” she said. “But it’s definitely a huge impact to, like I said, not only my income but all creators who post on TikTok.”
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