When asked for his reasons for delaying the ban on TikTok, President Trump, a man not unfamiliar with changing his mind, said: “Because I got to use it.”
This is quite some change of heart. It was he who, in 2020, signed an executive order citing the “national emergency” posed by the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform. Five years later, Trump, now positioned as the saviour of TikTok, has said that he has “a warm spot” for the platform. Coached by his son Barron, Trump amassed 15 million TikTok followers and says the platform is the reason he won the youth vote by 36 points (a claim that is not substantiated).
He now claims that Microsoft, among others, is in talks to acquire the app, and that within 30 days he will have news about the future of the platform. But in the meantime, where does this leave the grave national security threat apparently posed by the platform? The arguments are plausible, but evidence is curiously scant.
Five years ago, Trump’s executive order was overturned in a legal challenge, but his anti-TikTok sentiment was doggedly continued by the Biden administration, culminating in a law that enjoyed bipartisan support. The US supreme court confirmed the ban earlier this month.
In the buildup to the law being passed, members of Congress were given a closed-door security briefing on the alleged threat posed by TikTok. The Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who received that briefing, described the evidence as “very vague … not convincing” and pointed to a “lack of substantive information” in the briefing.
TikTok makes money by knowing its users, keeping them scrolling for hours, and showing them content that will appeal to them. It also knows their location, IP address, device and can accurately infer gender, sexual orientation, religious views and many other sensitive data points. In this way, it is exactly the same as other large-scale, free-to-use social media platforms. The difference is, that being Chinese owned, the parent company can be compelled to give up that information to the Chinese government. TikTok denies that it has been asked or would comply, but that is the law.
There are many reasons for suspicion and discomfort over China and its technical ambitions – from its flagrant offensive cyberoperations such as the hacks of the Office of Personnel Management and Microsoft Exchange, to its strategic approach to gaining dominance in technical standards bodies.
The difference in the TikTok case is that a significant proportion of the youthful TikTok users just don’t buy the “reds under the bed” narrative. It’s not that they ignore it; some seem to proactively reject it. In the words of one TikTok-er: “‘But, but, China’s stealing your data!’ I don’t care. I would drop-ship my DNA to the front door of the Chinese Communist party before I watch an Instagram Reel.”
Far from heeding the serious warnings about the potential for Chinese espionage over TikTok, in the run-up to the ban millions of US TikTok users were reported to have joined the even-more-Chinese app Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, after accepting terms of service written in Mandarin. Despite a rich choice of US alternatives, millions are defiantly going more Chinese in their video sharing, not less.
Instead of exposing the ideological divides between US and Chinese young people, the engagement on RedNote has opened up exchanges such as “Nǐ hǎo guys, here’s my puppy 😇”, that emphasise common ground over the prevailing, dehumanising narratives of mistrust and division.
Ever the opportunist, Trump has instinctively understood the public mood among a swathe of young Americans, tuning in to the youthful zeitgeist in ways that elude his fellow over-70s in Congress.
What happens next is anyone’s guess – a sale to a US corporate going ahead, possible legal challenges to Trump’s executive order, maybe even the repeal of the law imposing a ban. The TikTok saga looks set to deliver new twists and turns. For now, however, the platform is back online, pulled back from the brink of oblivion for 75 days.
It is bizarre that the TikTok saviour be a larger-than-life figure like Trump – but then, it’s somehow so very TikTok.
Emily Taylor is an associate fellow in the International Security Programme, Chatham House, CEO of Oxford Information Labs and editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy
