If ByteDance Refuses to Sell, Should Biden Ban TikTok in the US?
AllSides Summary
The Biden Administration is pressuring ByteDance, the Chinese owners of the popular app TikTok, to sell the company or potentially be banned in the United States. Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced the “Restrict Act,” which would “authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries,” granting the power to ban TikTok.
Anti-Ban: An opinion piece in the Washington Post argued banning TikTok would not only be an ineffective way of combating propaganda, but also an “entirely un-American, undemocratic and inappropriate response to an unproven risk that the Chinese-owned platform will share users’ data with Beijing for nefarious purposes.” In January, a piece in Reason (Lean Right Bias) objected to a ban on the grounds of the first amendment, stating, “shutting it down would silence the speech of 94 million U.S. users, none of whom are in China or Chinese citizens.”
Pro-Ban: An opinion article in Newsweek (Center Bias) called for a ban on TikTok, citing security concerns and comparing the application to addictive substances, determining, “the aim of the Chinese Communist Party is not simply to gather information through TikTok, but to disadvantage America by harming our minds.”
Anti-TikTok: The New York Post Editorial Board stopped short of supporting a ban on the app, but outlined potential dangers for children using the app and called for action by parents “before a whole generation is lost.”
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Left
Banning TikTok is a bad solution to the wrong problem
No more glow-ups. No more 10-second viral dances. No more short lessons on how to clean your stove. Banning TikTok would potentially save users a lot of time scrolling through incredibly addictive content.
But a ban would be an entirely un-American, undemocratic and inappropriate response to an unproven risk that the Chinese-owned platform will share users’ data with Beijing for nefarious purposes. What’s more, banning TikTok would be completely useless in combating a different, much better-evidenced social media pitfall — the spread of dangerous propaganda.
An outright ban of the...
From the Center
Biden administration threatens to ban TikTok if Chinese parent company doesn’t sell stakes
The Biden administration has demanded the Chinese owners of TikTok sell their stakes in the social media app or risk a possible ban in the U.S., the company told The Hill on Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the U.S. Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) made the push. TikTok confirmed it had heard from CFIUS and said it did not dispute the reporting.
The CFIUS demand comes amid security concerns about the video-sharing app, which is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance —...
From the Right
TikTok is harming kids, and parents need to step up
Want answers about the mental-health crisis sweeping America’s teens? Look no further than TikTok, a social video app that pushes the worst in human behavior.
In two deep dives on the platform during which she pretended to be a teen boy and teen girl, The Post’s Asia Grace found TikTok to be a parent’s worst nightmare.
Log on as a 14-year-old girl? Get bombarded with content glorifying violence and sex (including tips on life from sex-trafficking misogynist Andrew Tate). And that’s to say nothing of the minutely detailed “how to”...
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