TikTok: Here to Stay?
BY AVA SCHEIBLER ‘22
There has been a lot of uncertainty the past couple of weeks regarding the fate of TikTok; however, users can rest assured that it is here to stay, at least for now. On Friday September 18, President Trump again promised to ban TikTok starting Sunday, September 20th unless it was sold to an American-owned company. This announcement maintained Trump’s August 6th Executive Order which gave TikTok 45 days to reach a “partnership between US tech firm Oracle and TikTok owner ByteDance,” according to BBC. This past weekend, however, TikTok struck a deal with Oracle, an American technology company based in California, that assuaged the President’s security concerns. TikTok’s controversiality originated from government officials’ labeling Tik-Tok as a national security threat, but Trump’s personal conflict with TikTok users following his Tulsa rally cannot be overlooked as a key motivator in his war against the platform.
According to the Wall Street Journal, officials worried that because ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was based in China, the Chinese government could potentially gain access to “vast amounts of personal information on Americans.” However, TikTok claimed that all of the data it collected on its users, such as internet addresses, search history, messages, phone contacts, and GPS, were kept private. It’s important to keep in mind that TikTok is by no means alone in its data farming; platforms like Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter also collect copious amounts of information from their users. Nevertheless, previous security problems and “concerns that TikTok was censoring content to comply with Chinese government requests” worried many federal commissions, and the current state of China-U.S. relations--a “geopolitical standoff” as described by the Wall Street Journal--added only more reason for American officials to consider banning TikTok in the states. TikTok’s CEO, Kevin Mayer, has repeatedly denied links to the Chinese government, claiming that even if TikTok, which stores its data on American servers, asked for data on its users, it would refuse. However, its information can be easily shared with ByteDance, which is based in China and may be connected to the Chinese Communist Party.
While there are undeniable security concerns regarding TikTok, Trump may have ulterior motives for banning the platform, such as memory of the embarrassment the platform caused for his campaign back in June. Leading up to Trump’s first rally since the pandemic began, TikTok, along with Twitter, quickly spread a viral political prank in which users signed up for the Tulsa, Oklahoma event with no intention of actually showing up. The rally was heavily criticized for posing a public health hazard and for originally being planned to take place on Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the ending of slavery, in the city of Tulsa, the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. Prior to the rally, Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, boasted “that the campaign had fielded more than a million ticket requests,” but in reality only 6,200 of the 19,000 possible seats were filled, according to the New York Times. Regardless of whether TikTok teens were directly responsible, this incident cannot be brushed off as unrelated.
Since Trump’s announcement, TikTok has held meetings with several different U.S. businesses, including Microsoft, Walmart, and Oracle. All three competed in a bidding war to gain control over TikTok’s U.S. operations. This past Saturday, TikTok announced that they would be partnering with Oracle as part of a combined effort to satisfy the U.S. government’s national security concerns. Then, late on Saturday the 19th, Trump tentatively approved the deal “in concept,” saying, “I have given the deal my blessing. If they get it done, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s okay too,” according to CNN. The deal gives Oracle a 20% cumulative stake in TikTok as well as pre-IPO financing, and TikTok’s global headquarters in the U.S. will be expanded, creating approximately 25,000 new jobs. The uncertainty surrounding the future of TikTok, unsurprisingly, has boosted its downloads, which rose 12% over the weekend, according to CNN.
Over the years, TikTok has amassed an enormous influence -- one both dangerous and highly profitable -- over young people throughout the world. Just like any good investment, stockholders will not let it go down without a fight.