On Jan. 17, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law that effectively bans the majority Chinese-owned TikTok from U.S. consumers unless the country sells the app to an outside entity. The decision was made on two grounds: that the Chinese Communist Party can compel TikTok to provide it with access to the data it collects about its American users, and that TikTok can shape its algorithm to bias information serving CCP interests. Thus, the court reasons, TikTok threatens the national security interests of the United States.
Given that there is no evidence the Chinese government has collected data about American users or shaped the algorithm to serve its geopolitical interests, the ban strips Americans of their First Amendment rights to access and publish information on the platform of their choice. It is unlikely to be the last such effort to close Americans off to foreign-owned platforms.
The law has shocked the platform’s mostly young user base, which has responded with memes mocking the idea of having personal “Chinese spies,” as well as free speech defenders watching events unfold from a distance. As the ACLU put it, the Supreme Court ruling is “a major blow to freedom of expression online.”
At the center of the drama is Donald Trump, who instigated the ban with an executive order in 2020, only to do a 180 during his presidential campaign. On Jan. 20, he issued an executive order delaying enforcement of the law for 75 days. Trump asserted that TikTok should become at least half-owned by a U.S. company if it wishes to stay online and threatened Beijing with yet more tariffs if it fails to comply.
The Supreme Court ruling is “a major blow to freedom of expression online.”
A master of manipulation, Trump can now cast himself as the great defender of free speech and social media, timed perfectly as he moves into office with an anti-free speech agenda that includes a new executive order barring constitutionally protected government communications with social media companies. The Republicans are also trying to ram through H.R. 9495, which would grant the secretary of the Treasury the unilateral power to investigate and revoke the tax-exempt status of news outlets, civil society groups and universities.
The bipartisan law behind the TikTok ban has always been part of the New Cold War with China. Washington has recently extended its ban on imports from Chinese companies, and it is considering bans on Chinese cloud computing alongside restrictions on artificial intelligence providers and access to advanced computer chips. Nor is it incidental that a number of American billionaires are looking to purchase TikTok, if ByteDance is willing to sell it. Turning the platform into a U.S. company — albeit without its coveted algorithm (which is excluded based on China’s export controls) — would not be without irony, because U.S. platforms routinely spy on users and shape their feeds for political ends, sometimes under pressure by the U.S. government. And as National Security Agency whistleblowers have demonstrated, the U.S. government hoovers up data from American Big Social Media networks to carry out its own surveillance. Instead of banning TikTok, the government should pass new privacy laws and mandate greater degrees of algorithmic transparency targeting all social media platforms.
As a result of U.S. bullying, there is growing chatter that the TikTok algorithm has already been changed since its brief shut down. Social media users are reporting their feeds are different now, with less politics and censorship of pro-Palestine content.
The most publicized U.S. bid for TikTok so far is from an outfit called Project Liberty. Founded with a $500 million donation from its billionaire real estate founder, Frank McCourt, the project aims to purchase TikTok and move it onto an open source, blockchain-based Decentralized Social Networking Protocol. While the DSNP has some virtues — such as its decentralized structure designed to prevent reduced network concentration — the nonprofit apparently sees no problem with piggybacking off the U.S. government to overtake a “foreign adversary” on grounds that undermines freedom of speech. And like Bluesky, Project Liberty is a “business friendly” initiative that doesn’t oppose for-profit social networking and the advertising industry powering platforms and the toxic influencer economy.
It has also been reported that Elon Musk is interested in taking over TikTok, a rumor that was immediately denied by TikTok. Trump has since stated that he is open to Musk purchasing TikTok. Musk, who has business interests in China, has opposed the ban on “free speech” grounds while criticizing the fact that TikTok can operate in the U.S., but X cannot operate in China.
Some users have promoted an exodus to a Chinese app focusing on “lifestyle” content called RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu). RedNote raced to the top of the Apple Store during the brief suspension of TikTok service, and has gained over 500,000 mostly American new users. A second Chinese app, Lemon8, connected to TikTok owner ByteDance, has become another refuge for the TikTok diaspora. This, too, will almost certainly be short-lived, as all mass migrations to new networks, from Mastodon to Bluesky, have fizzled out, largely due to the power of network effects. It is easier to collectively join a familiar network, such as Instagram or YouTube Shorts.
Those concerned about freedom of speech should accept the challenge of building a people’s social media infrastructure.
Some psuedo-left influencers have been promoting the idea that TikTok emigrants to RedNote are getting a first-class education about the alleged superiority of China — a mostly poor and highly unequal country of 1.4 billion people subject to authoritarian state repression, widespread worker exploitation and dystopian censorship. In reality, RedNote contains the same kinds of exploitative features as American social media giants, plus it censors its users in support of the CCP. And if deemed a “national security” threat, it can be banned under the same law, just like TikTok.
If the TikTok ban is ultimately enforced, and the app is no longer usable within the U.S., the primary beneficiaries will probably be established American tech giants, such as Meta. In 2018, Facebook paid a Republican consulting firm, Targeted Victory, to smear TikTok by placing op-eds and news reports of bogus stories, including about alleged trends that actually originated on Facebook. Last year, Meta spent $24.4 million lobbying Congress, its largest sum yet. (TikTok parent ByteDance also spent millions lobbying Congress, to no avail.) When the Indian government banned TikTok in 2020, most of its users migrated to platforms like Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube Shorts.
The answer to the Supreme Court ruling is not a rearguard defense of TikTok as it is (or was). Despite claims that TikTok “is the only truly democratic social platform,” there is little to romanticize about its top-down corporate structure, profit orientation, reliance on advertising, addictive features and toxic influencer culture. Those concerned about freedom of speech should accept the challenge of building a people’s social media infrastructure that does not rely on large companies at all — whether owned by Chinese or American billionaires. The pieces for a democratically organized social media network are already in place, but they need to be developed within a broader initiative to socialize the media landscape. Yet for nearly two decades, the U.S. and European tech pseudo-left has failed to advocate a better, truly decentralized vision. Instead, it continues to pursue a fragmented and mildly reformist agenda for a social media ecosystem that cannot be fixed without a wholesale reconstruction.