Tik Tok is a TOOL for Communist government of China to spy on America

Analysis: There is now some public evidence that China viewed TikTok data

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index.html


US officials have long insisted the Chinese government may be able to view the personal information of TikTok users — but that claim was purely speculative. Until now.

In what appears to be a first, a former employee of ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, has outlined specific claims that the Chinese Communist Party accessed the data of TikTok users on a broad scale, and for political purposes.

In a court filing this week, the former employee of ByteDance, Yintao Yu, alleged that the CCP spied on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in 2018 by using “backdoor” access to TikTok to identify and monitor the activists’ locations and communications.

Multiple security experts told CNN that this appears to be the first reported allegation of the CCP accessing actual TikTok user data. The explosive claim, which ByteDance disputes, could inflame a global debate over whether TikTok poses a security threat and whether policymakers are right to ban the short-form video app.

The evidence, such as it is, remains rather thin. It is a sworn statement by Yu, who is suing ByteDance in a wrongful termination case in California state court. The declaration does not provide documentation, internal messages or other primary source materials to substantiate the claim.

But Yu, who pledged under penalty of perjury that he is telling the truth, alleges he viewed access logs showing that CCP officials — whom Yu described as part of a special “committee” with dedicated physical access to ByteDance’s Beijing offices — used a so-called “god credential” to bypass any privacy protections the company may have otherwise applied to the TikTok data.

“The Committee and external investigators used the god credential to identify and locate the Hong Kong protestors, civil rights activists, and supporters of the protests,” Yu alleged in the filing. “From the logs, I saw that the Committee accessed the protestors’, civil rights activists’, and supporters’ unique user data, locations, and communications.”

The filing was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

TikTok declined to comment on the allegation. In a statement, a ByteDance spokesperson sought to discredit Yu’s claims as an opportunistic publicity grab.

“We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint,” the statement said, adding that Yu’s employment at a ByteDance app known as Flipagram was terminated in 2018 after working for the company for less than a year. “It’s curious that Mr. Yu has never raised these allegations in the five years since his employment for Flipagram was terminated in July 2018. His actions are clearly intended to garner media attention.”

Types of data that the CCP may have accessed, Yu suggests, include device identifiers, network information such as IP addresses and users’ direct messages, along with search and browsing histories. TikTok announced its withdrawal from Hong Kong in 2020 after China imposed a national security law there.

James Lewis, an information security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and John Scott-Railton, an information security expert at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, both agreed that Yu’s claim appears to be the first to identify a specific circumstance where the CCP has actually accessed TikTok data.

There have been isolated reports of improper access to TikTok data in the past. Most notably, ByteDance has acknowledged having fired a number of employees who sought to access account information belonging to several journalists. The improper access, company officials have said, was a misguided attempt at identifying the source of leaks to the press.

That situation appeared to have been limited to several individuals, however, and did not appear to involve agents working on behalf of the CCP. By contrast, US officials have characterized their suspicions of TikTok in much broader terms, describing fears of the Chinese government using TikTok data to inform large-scale intelligence gathering operations or to promote disinformation campaigns at a societal level.

When Rob Joyce, the National Security Agency’s director of cybersecurity, was asked by reporters in December to articulate his security concerns about TikTok, he offered a general warning about the potential for harm rather than a specific allegation.

“People are always looking for the smoking gun in these technologies,” Joyce said. “I characterize it much more as a loaded gun.”

TikTok CEO Shou Chew previously told US lawmakers that the company has never been asked by the Chinese government for data on its US users, and would never comply with such a request. TikTok has also said it is implementing a plan to store US user data on third-party US-based servers, with access to that data controlled by US employees. The company is moving to implement a similar solution for European data.

But Chew and other TikTok officials have also balked at answering specific questions about the nature of TikTok’s relationship to ByteDance or ByteDance’s relationship to the Chinese government.

The allegations by Yu concerning Hong Kong dissidents are much closer in nature to the type of concerns raised by the US government. They imply the direct interference of Chinese officials in the business operations of a private company, ultimately leading to broad-based surveillance intended to shut down democratic activity.

Yu’s claims have still yet to be proven. But they provide a rare, if not the first, substantive accusation of what many have hypothesized as merely a possibility.

Is TikTok harvesting data?
What data does TikTok collect? TikTok tracks which videos users engage with and how long they do so. The privacy policy also enables the app to track the contents of direct messages, as well as your country location, internet address, and device type.

Can TikTok watch you?
What TikTok knows about you. TikTok can gather information when you arrive on the site even if you aren't signed up, via cookies and other trackers. Once you've created an account, the social network collects data about your activities and preferences based on the videos you watch.

Why is TikTok blocked in China?
They have pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations. They are also worried that China could use TikTok's content recommendations for misinformation.

Does TikTok give data to China?
Can TikTok share data with China's government？ Yes. Tiktok has stated several times that it has not shared data with China's government, and company executives have further stated they would refuse to hand over any data to China if asked.

Does TikTok read your texts?
TikTok, like many other social media platforms, has the capability to read and track direct messages (DMs) in order to ensure compliance with their terms of service and community guidelines. This means that TikTok's algorithm scans the content of DMs to detect and remove any inappropriate or offensive material.

How invasive is TikTok?
It's not any more invasive than any other social-media app. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all require you to give up much of your personal information by signing that EULA. The difference is that Facebook and Instagram are based in the United States, and TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is based in China.

What is China getting from TikTok?
Types of data that the CCP may have accessed, Yu suggests, include device identifiers, network information such as IP addresses and users' direct messages, along with search and browsing histories. TikTok announced its withdrawal from Hong Kong in 2020 after China imposed a national security law there.

Should I delete TikTok?
The app can invade your privacy because it is able to see everything and everyone users interact with. TikTok also collects information regarding a user's name, age, email, phone number, networks they use, contacts they have and more.

Does TikTok track you after you delete it?
Well, that depends on exactly what you are deleting. If you delete your account and uninstall the app from your phone, TikTok can't collect your data going forward, says Katherine Isaac, an executive at cybersecurity firm Carbide. But that doesn't mean all your data disappears right away.Mar 8, 2023

Can TikTok see my Google searches?
TikTok receives information including a person's IP address, their web browsing habits and search history, though some privacy settings can override how much data is tracked.

Can China track you on TikTok?
The Chinese-owned social media platform's parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing and is required by Chinese law to give the government access to collected data. TikTok collects data that includes search and browsing history, facial ID, voice prints, texts, location, and photos.

Can China see my info on TikTok?
For a long time, TikTok insisted any data collected by their servers could not be accessed by anyone in China. In November 2022, the company changed its privacy policy. It now said staff in China could access data.

Does TikTok track your location?
TikTok collects your approximate location information based on your device or network information, such as SIM card and IP address. In regions where Location Services are available for the TikTok app, and when you turn it on, TikTok will also collect your location information based on your device's GPS.

How do I stop TikTok from tracking me?
To turn it off, do the following: Go to Settings and Privacy, select Privacy, then Ads Personalization, and click off “Use of Off-TikTok Activity for Ad Targeting”. It's not a bulletproof method to avoid Tiktok tracking you for ads but any little bit helps.

7 Reasons TikTok Is Bad for Everyone
Chinese Influence Elicits Privacy Concerns. ...
The Dangers of TikTok for Your Brain. ...
TikTok Is Riddled With Censorship. ...
The Dangers of TikTok Challenges. ...
TikTok's Data Collection Is Suspect at Best. ...
Users Experience Security Vulnerabilities. ...
Worrisome Content Makes TikTok Bad for Youth.

Why is the US worried about TikTok?
What is TikTok accused of? The Biden Administration and the U.S. intelligence community are reportedly concerned about Americans' data falling into Chinese hands because of the belief that this data could help China conduct influence operations aimed at the American public.


TECH SECURITYWHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE TIKTOK SECURITY CONCERNS
What to Know About the TikTok Security Concerns

https://time.com/6265651/tiktok-security-us/

What to know about TikTok owner ByteDance as U.S. considers possible ban

PSST - It's not a ban - just a owner and data transfer to a US company

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/13/who-is-tiktok-owner-bytedance/





The House of Representatives voted to pass a measure Wednesday that could lead to the forced sale or ban of video-sharing app TikTok in the United States, amid concerns that the Chinese-owned platform could be used to monitor and manipulate Americans.

The fight over TikTok, which says it has 170 million U.S. users, represents growing fears over China’s influence in the United States, especially in an election year. A nationwide ban, if it goes into effect, could pose an existential threat to one of China’s most successful internet companies.

The bipartisan legislation, the future of which will be decided in the Senate, would give TikTok’s owner, the Beijing-based ByteDance, half a year to sell the short-video platform or face a ban on the Apple and Google app stores and web-hosting services in the United States. President Biden has said he would sign the legislation into law if it passes Congress.

What is ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok?

ByteDance was founded in 2012 out of a four-bedroom apartment in northern Beijing. Its founder, Zhang Yiming, was then a 29-year-old software engineer turned entrepreneur whose vision was to use big data and machine learning to analyze and curate content according to user preferences.

ByteDance is sometimes nicknamed the “app factory” given how prolific it has been in recent years. One of ByteDance’s earliest and most popular products is the AI-powered news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, largely used in China. In 2016, the company launched the short video app Douyin, which is also hugely popular in China. In 2017, the company launched the international version of that app, known as TikTok.

TikTok is widely seen as the first Chinese app to go global and ByteDance, valued at $268 billion in December, as one of China’s most successful internet companies. A release issued last May by TikTok stated that about 60 percent of ByteDance “is beneficially owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group,” with about 20 percent owned by “ByteDance employees around the world” and the rest owned by its founder.

Why is ByteDance controversial in the United States?

TikTok has become a target of some U.S. legislators, who see it as a potential national security threat, amid worsening relations between Washington and Beijing.

ByteDance has repeatedly said that it has never shared data of U.S. users with the Chinese authorities, but U.S. lawmakers point out that the company could be required to turn over information to the government under Chinese law. Lawmakers have yet to present any evidence of TikTok’s alleged national security risks.

In a hearing in March 2023 before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said TikTok “as a U.S. company incorporated in the United States, is subject to the laws of the United States,” and has made efforts to address the concern of U.S. authorities “about TikTok’s heritage.”

“Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” he said in a statement.

The company has sought approval for its U.S. subsidiary to handle the management and oversight of “protected U.S. user data and the systems that power TikTok” in the United States, under an initiative known as “Project Texas.” The subsidiary, called TikTok U.S. Data Security, would report to an independent board, not to the leadership of TikTok or ByteDance, TikTok said. Under the plan, which has not been approved by U.S. authorities, data belonging to U.S. users would be stored by the Austin-headquartered technology company Oracle, with the ability to “communicate with the global TikTok service in controlled and monitored ways.”

Some experts have cautioned that a forced sale or ban, if passed, could face challenges in U.S. courts. As The Washington Post previously reported, a separate effort by President Donald Trump to force a ban or sale of TikTok in 2020 was blocked by federal courts, who ruled the government had not adequately proved that the app presented a national security threat.

ByteDance’s products have also come under more regulation from Chinese authorities. In 2018, it was forced to shutter an app reserved for jokes called Neihan Duanzi that had created a cult following but was seen by regulators as “vulgar.” Zhang apologized publicly for failing to “promote positive energy and grasp correct guidance of public opinion.”

Who is the founder of ByteDance?

Zhang, the soft-spoken founder of ByteDance, grew up in the city of Longyan in the southwestern Chinese province of Fujian. He studied software engineering at Nankai University in Tianjin, where he fixed other students’ computers and set up websites for extra money.

After graduating, Zhang worked on a search engine for plane tickets as well as a microblogging platform before joining Microsoft. He left after a half a year because he was “bored,” according to an interview he gave in 2014. After Microsoft, he founded a real estate platform before starting ByteDance.

In a 2015 speech, Zhang said the idea for ByteDance emerged when he noticed that fewer people were reading newspapers on the subway. He said he realized that phones would become the main means to disseminate information, and demand for personalization would skyrocket.

Zhang has said that he hopes his company can be as global as Google but in a 2017 interview acknowledged the challenges. “If when Chinese companies go overseas, they can overcome cultural problems, will the overseas market be huge? I am both optimistic and pessimistic about this,” he said.

What is his relationship to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew?

There is relatively little information available publicly about the relationship between Zhang and Chew, who became CEO of TikTok in 2021.

In May 2021, Zhang announced in a letter to employees that he would step down as CEO of ByteDance to focus less on day-to-day management and more on long-term strategy. Liang Rubo, a ByteDance co-founder, was announced as the new CEO of ByteDance.

Last month, Chew told The Post that he is in charge of all of TikTok’s strategic decisions. But he said he routinely updates Liang on “certain topics that I think he may have an interesting point of view, just to make sure the perspective is complete.”

As The Post previously reported, Chew, a Singaporean national who grew up in Singapore, studied economics in the United Kingdom before working at Goldman Sachs for two years. He then moved to the United States to get his master’s degree at Harvard Business School. While a student there, Chew interned at Facebook, now a bitter competitor to TikTok.

Chew has said he was first introduced to DST Global, a venture capital firm that bet on major tech firms including Facebook and Twitter, while he was working at Goldman Sachs. After graduating from Harvard, he worked with DST Global as a partner, where he helped to coordinate one of the earliest investments in ByteDance by building relationships with its founding engineers, Zhang and Liang.

House passes potential TikTok ban that could speed through Senate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/20/tiktok-ban-vote-house-passes/

By tying the renewed crackdown to a bipartisan foreign aid deal, the bill could move quickly through Congress





House lawmakers escalated efforts to restrict video-sharing platform TikTok, renewing pressure on the Senate by advancing a bill Saturday that would force the company to be sold or face a national ban as part of a broader package sending aid to Israel and Ukraine.

The unorthodox maneuver could expedite the crackdown’s path through Congress, where negotiations had slowed after an earlier attempt hurtled through the House last month. With growing support in the Senate, the legislation appears more likely than ever to become law.

The move represents one of the most significant threats to the U.S. operations of the wildly popular app, which is used by roughly 170 million Americans, but whose China-based parent company ByteDance has long sparked national security fears in Washington.

TikTok is “a spy balloon in Americans’ phones” used to “surveil and exploit America’s personal information,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Saturday as he introduced the measure for debate.

The House voted 360-58 to approve legislation authorizing new penalties against Russia and Iran and requiring that TikTok divest from ByteDance or face a prohibition, one of several measures considered alongside the $95 billion foreign aid bills.

House lawmakers overwhelmingly advanced an earlier version of the legislation targeting TikTok last month, but tying the issue to the aid package, which has broad bipartisan support in both chambers, could expedite its passage through the Senate.

The Senate plans to take the matter up Tuesday, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement emailed to The Post. “The Senate now stands ready to take the next step,” Schumer said.

President Biden said last month he would sign the TikTok bill if passed by Congress, and on Wednesday he endorsed the House foreign aid package, saying, “The House must pass the package this week, and the Senate should quickly follow.”

Under the bill, ByteDance would have up to 360 days to divest TikTok. If it declined or failed to do so during that time, mobile app stores and web-hosting providers would be prohibited from offering the app to users in the United States, effectively banning it nationwide. The bill explicitly targets TikTok and ByteDance, but would give the president the power to impose a similar ultimatum against other apps deemed to be “controlled” by “foreign adversaries.”

The TikTok measure has broad bipartisan support in the House.

“Companies and bad actors are collecting troves of our data unchecked and using it to exploit, monetize, and manipulate Americans of all ages,” Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said Saturday in a statement lauding the bill’s passage. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”

TikTok has blasted lawmakers’ efforts to potentially ban the app as an affront on free speech and disputes lawmakers’ suggestions that it is beholden to China or any government.

Since lawmakers introduced their latest proposal targeting the app last month, the company has launched a major counteroffensive against the effort, enlisting scores of users through pop-up notifications to bombard lawmakers with calls voicing opposition to the legislation.

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually,” TikTok said Saturday in a statement to The Washington Post.

After House lawmakers passed the earlier TikTok legislation in just over a week, many senators called for slowing down deliberations in the upper chamber. Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose committee has jurisdiction over the bill, initially expressed concerns about whether the proposal could withstand legal scrutiny and called for hearings.

But since then, a number of senators have come out in favor of the proposal and plans to tuck it into the foreign aid package. Cantwell announced Wednesday that she now supports the legislation after lawmakers agreed to give ByteDance more time to sell off TikTok.

Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, are supportive of the bill’s inclusion in the aid package, their offices confirmed. The two lawmakers had previously led separate legislative efforts to tackle concerns over the app.

“I’m glad to see the House help push this important bill forward to force Beijing-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok,” Warner said in a statement to The Post.

Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, dismissed the idea that TikTok is a national security threat, noting that even if the Chinese government is demanding access to user data, “the app is not collecting particularly sensitive data.”

“Policymakers have legitimate concerns about Chinese-made apps and reciprocal access to China’s digital market, but they should address those issues through policies that are specific, scalable, and sound,” Castro said in an email to The Post.

A potential TikTok ban would hurt American businesses and content creators who use the platform to market their products and services, Castro said.

The effort is likely to face significant legal hurdles, as have previous attempts by the Trump administration and states to force a sale or ban of the app.

Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, a group that advocates for free speech rights, said in a statement Friday that the TikTok bill would “infringe” on “Americans’ First Amendment right to access information, ideas, and media from abroad.”

“Legislators who are genuinely concerned about social media platforms’ practices have better options at their disposal, and we continue to urge lawmakers to lean in to those rather than undermining the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans,” Johnson said.

Everything TikTok users need to know about a possible ban in the U.S.

Congress has passed a bill that could make it happen. Here’s how and when it will affect you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/


American officials have been warning for years about the risks of TikTok, but it has been mostly talk and little action.

This week, though, a new law will probably give the U.S. government the authority to try to ban one of the most popular apps in the country. (The key word is “try.”)

Is this it for TikTok and those of you who use the social app? Should you delete it and walk away from your communities or livelihood on TikTok? Read on.

Is TikTok really going to be banned?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/#MCVBM6QWAVA6VDFS7E5AQGBA7A-0

When would TikTok be gone?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/#XKP3F5IRYFECPPWAZL2ZOTUIEM-1

Could TikTok find a new owner in time?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/#CSYLYXMCMFB2TISYN3CFVTTNIM-2

Why do they want to ban TikTok?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/#FWIHJWF6U5BL3NKT3BYH2SXLNY-3

How can I save my TikTok data?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/#CA6HHQ4OYFBXNNHQDTZ5SGUMVE-4

What are the alternatives to TikTok?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/23/tiktok-ban-us-start-explained/#F4OYRDDHGNEUBLHDO37JI2F5LQ-5

Is TikTok really going to be banned?

Not yet.

Congress passed legislation on Tuesday that is an ultimatum to TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese technology giant ByteDance: Sell to a company that isn’t Chinese within about a year or face a ban on the app in the United States.

President Biden signed the bill into law on Wednesday. Even so, TikTok is likely to challenge the new law in court.

Legal experts have said a potential ban as it is written may violate Americans’ First Amendment rights by outlawing an app they use for free expression. The legal experts also cautioned that the government may be overstepping the Constitution by targeting a single company it dislikes. Previous attempts to ban Chinese apps including TikTok have stalled in court.

Any ban on TikTok in the United States, then, would not happen for many months. But this is the closest the United States has come to kicking out an app used by an estimated 170 million Americans.

When would TikTok be gone?

The latest version of the legislation gives TikTok 270 days — about nine months — to sell to another company, with provisions for a 90-day extension if “significant progress” is being made to sell TikTok. During that time, the app would probably continue to operate as normal in the United States.

The 270-day timeline means TikTok would keep working well past the November presidential election. The timeline in the original House bill was only 180 days, which could have shut down the app a month ahead of the election.

Lawsuits could extend the proposed timeline or dump a ban entirely. Or TikTok could sell the app instead but …

Could TikTok find a new owner in time?
Return to menu
The odds may not be great.

China’s government has previously said it would strongly oppose a forced sale of the app.

And a purchase of TikTok would probably cost tens of billions of dollars. Few people or companies have that kind of money — and companies that do, such as Meta or Google, probably won’t try to buy TikTok because antitrust regulators are unlikely to allow it.

The likeliest outcome, then, may be an attempted government ban of TikTok, and almost certainly courts will have to decide whether a ban violates Americans’ constitutional rights.

Why do they want to ban TikTok?

Many U.S. government officials worry that China’s government can force TikTok to hand over data from Americans’ smartphones or manipulate the videos people see on TikTok toward the preferences of the Chinese Communist Party.

Those concerns are largely hypothetical. U.S. officials have not made public evidence that TikTok has been systematically manipulated by China’s government.

But those officials say the only surefire way to remove the national security risk is to force ByteDance to sell the U.S. version of TikTok to a non-Chinese owner or kick the app out of the United States entirely.

The officials who worry about TikTok also say it is a unique risk to U.S. national security. The app is used by roughly half of Americans, and it functions like a TikTok-programmed nationwide TV channel that could influence Americans’ views about elections or the Israel-Gaza war.

Legislators have also grilled TikTok’s CEO and other executives over the spread of child sexual abuse material through their apps and the potential harm to children’s mental health from social media use. Those concerns are not specific to TikTok.

How can I save my TikTok data?

For now, your experience should remain the same on the app, but you can start planning for a potential shutdown. See whether your favorite creators also post on other apps and follow them there, too.

If you post to TikTok, make sure your videos are backed up by going to your profile → Settings and privacy → Account → Download your data.

What are the alternatives to TikTok?

TikTok clones are everywhere.

YouTube has YouTube Shorts, and Instagram’s Reels also are a constant feed of short vertical videos tailored to your tastes. Snapchat has Spotlight, in the same vein.

If TikTok is actually removed from app stores in the United States, we’ll probably see more companies trying to come up with alternatives. That’s what happened after Elon Musk bought Twitter.

What does this mean for creators on the app?

If TikTok goes away, some individual creators and small-business owners will face a threat to their livelihoods, they have said — more than 7 million U.S. businesses sell products on TikTok, according to the company.

TikTok did not immediately respond to questions about creators’ businesses in the wake of a ban, including how long paid ads would continue to run and what would happen to CapCut, the ByteDance-owned video-editing app. There is currently no way for creators to port their followers to another app.

How can I protect myself on TikTok?

As for the concerns being voiced by lawmakers, you should decide for yourself on your personal risk tolerance when it comes to TikTok.

If you’re uneasy about watching or posting on TikTok, the safest step is not to download or use the app at all. Even if you like using TikTok, or your child does, it’s worth considering changes to keep your information more private from the company and other people on the app.

Don’t share your contacts with TikTok: The app will repeatedly ask for permission to access the contacts on your phone or link to your Facebook account. That data can reveal more than you expect about you or your friends. Read more here on how to check your current TikTok settings or change them.

Set up a new and more anonymous TikTok account. Create an email address that you only use for your TikTok account.

Block TikTok from collecting information on what you do outside of its app. On iPhones and Android devices, say no when the app asks for permission to track you — or, even better, adjust the setting so no apps can do so.

Watch TikTok videos on a web browser instead of in the app. You won’t get a personalized feed of videos or be able to follow specific accounts, but you can just watch individual TikTok videos on the web without downloading the app at all.

For parents, TikTok has a feature to link their accounts with a teen’s. You can control settings including daily time limits for the app and who can comment on your teen’s videos.

Read more in our guide to TikTok settings to change now. And read our parents’ manual for your kid and social media.


Possible TikTok ban
President Biden announced he has signed legislation to ban or force a sale of TikTok after Congress passed legislation to ban or force a sale of TikTok, delivering a historic rebuke of the video-sharing platform’s Chinese ownership.

What the bill does: The bill, which saw bipartisan support in the House and Senate, would require the social media app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell off the immensely popular app or face a nationwide ban. Here’s what you should know about the potential ban.

What’s next: The provision gives ByteDance roughly nine months to sell the wildly popular app or face a national ban, a deadline Biden could extend the deadline by 90 days. TikTok is expected to challenge the measure, setting up a high-stakes and potentially lengthy legal battle over the app’s fate.

Reactions: TikTok creators say a ban would threaten their lives and livelihoods, while young users of the app previously asked Congress why they aren’t focusing on “bigger problems.”

Trump got one thing right: Banning TikTok would help Meta (and Google)

Congress’s first tech crackdown in years is a gift to Big Tech

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/24/tiktok-ban-benefits-meta-google/





Former president Donald Trump is perhaps not the most credible critic of a potential TikTok ban, given that he tried to ban the app himself while in office before coming out against the bill that President Biden signed into law today. But amid a barrage of conspiratorial nonsense, unproven claims and insults as he criticizes the measure, Trump has hit on a kernel of truth: The most immediate winner from a ban would most likely be Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

The prospect of a TikTok ban has loomed for years, but it’s closer to reality than ever now that Biden has signed a bill giving its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell the app or see it banned in the United States. It’s still not a sure thing, as China has signaled it will block a sale, and TikTok has vowed to challenge the law in court.

While the bill’s stated aim is to protect Americans from Chinese spying and influence via the popular social media app, it’s true that there’s another group that stands to benefit: the U.S. tech companies that have been struggling to compete with TikTok. Those include Meta, Google and, to a lesser extent, Snap and Amazon.

For Meta in particular, the bill could accomplish what Mark Zuckerberg and his company for years have been unable to do: neutralize the biggest and most stubborn competitor they’ve ever faced.

Since it toppled Myspace 15 years ago, Meta — formerly Facebook — has solidified its hold on social media through a playbook that includes shrewd acquisitions, copycat products and strategic pivots. It bought Instagram and WhatsApp, neutralized Snapchat by copying its signature Stories feature and recently took on X by launching Threads.

But the playbook didn’t work against TikTok. Facebook reportedly tried to buy its predecessor, the Chinese lip-syncing app Musical.ly, in 2016, but ByteDance ended up acquiring it instead. So in 2020, Facebook launched Reels, a short-video app with a format and content nearly identical to TikTok’s. Though Reels has grown steadily, thanks in part to its aggressive integration with Instagram, TikTok has maintained its hold on teens while making inroads with adults.

In 2022, after Meta’s flagship Facebook app lost users for the first time, the company overhauled it to be more like TikTok.

Struggling to fend off TikTok in the marketplace, Facebook tried another tack: demonizing it.

Zuckerberg took aim at TikTok in a 2019 speech at Georgetown University. “While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U.S.,” he said. “Is that the internet we want?”

In 2022, The Washington Post reported that Facebook had been quietly paying a major Republican consulting firm, Targeted Victory, to push local news stories and op-eds that painted TikTok as a danger to kids and society. Those included stories about dangerous viral TikTok trends, many of which turned out to be overblown or to have also spread on Facebook. Still, the narratives caught on with lawmakers, who raised them in congressional hearings.

And last year, when the Federal Trade Commission announced plans to bar Meta from monetizing the personal data of minors, the company blasted the agency for “allowing Chinese companies, like TikTok, to operate without constraint on American soil.”

To be fair, there may be valid concerns about TikTok, many of which The Post has reported on over the years. Still, Meta’s scare tactics against a rival were out of the ordinary in Silicon Valley, where companies usually try to crush each other in business rather than in politics.

Whether those tactics played a role in building support for a ban is unclear. The company has not taken a public stance on the bill that passed Tuesday night, and Meta spokesman Andy Stone said on Tuesday that the company did not lobby on the bill.

But Meta stands ready to reap the rewards if TikTok disappears. And it won’t be the only beneficiary.

Months after Meta launched Reels, Google’s YouTube debuted its own short-form video feature, YouTube Shorts. While Google has not gone after TikTok the way Meta has, neither has it stood up for the company. And it stands to gain nearly as much as Meta if TikTok is taken out of commission.

The industry analyst eMarketer predicts that Meta could capture an estimated 22.5 to 27.5 percent of TikTok’s U.S. ad revenue, bolstering the company’s bottom line by more than $2 billion in 2025. It envisions Google capturing more like 15 to 20 percent.

“Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts is where most TikTok users would migrate to,” said Jasmine Enberg, eMarketer’s principal social media analyst. While neither is a perfect replacement for TikTok, “they’re the most natural fit” for both users and advertisers seeking an alternative for short videos.

That’s what happened when India banned TikTok.

“When TikTok was banned in India, creators moved to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of Global Business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. “Of course, they had to rebuild their audiences and some of the appealing features of TikTok were lost, but life moved on. Meta and Google were the beneficiaries — their products served as good-enough alternatives. You can expect the same in the U.S., until a clever disruptive entrant emerges.”

Enberg of eMarketer said a few other U.S. tech firms could also see gains. While Snapchat’s short-video feature, Spotlight, hasn’t taken off, it’s a leading competitor for teens’ attention. And Amazon might “breathe a sigh of relief should TikTok Shop disappear,” she added, as the e-commerce giant has struggled to respond to the trend of “serendipitous, social shopping.”

There could also be implications for online search and the businesses that rely on it for advertising, noted Damian Rollison, director of market insights for the marketing platform SOCi. He said the company’s analysis finds that TikTok and Instagram have recently surpassed Google as the go-to sites for young people searching for businesses online.

After years of congressional grillings and grandstanding aimed at tech giants, it’s striking that the U.S. government’s first major legislative crackdown on social media is essentially a gift to domestic Big Tech.

Ironically, the move comes at the same time that the Biden administration is suing Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple for monopolization of their respective markets. Meta in particular has defended itself by pointing out the competition it faces from TikTok.

Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit Fight for the Future, argues that Congress’s efforts would have been better directed toward privacy and antitrust laws rather than a bill that targets a single company.

“Banning TikTok without passing real tech regulation will just further entrench monopolies like Meta and Google, without doing anything to protect Americans from data harvesting or government propaganda,” Greer said.

How TikTok went from teen sensation to political pariah

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/16/tiktok-reshape-social-media-potential-ban/


In the more than seven years since TikTok was born as a niche lip-syncing app for Chinese teens, the platform has reshaped the media landscape — forcing U.S. tech giants to reckon with a foreign rival. The short-form video platform has amassed startling economic power, with more than a billion users worldwide and revenue expected to surpass YouTube’s, at nearly $25 billion by 2025.

Now, the popular video app faces a challenge from the federal government, after lawmakers passed a bill Tuesday to force TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a U.S. ban. President Biden signed the bill into law early Wednesday.

Critics argue that the app’s relationship to ByteDance makes it a national security threat, potentially allowing it to share data about its American users or steer its algorithms at Beijing’s behest. This concern has spiraled into a slew of political action: Donald Trump’s administration once tried to ban TikTok, and more than two dozen states have barred the app from government-owned devices — a panic that some describe as a threat to free speech in America.

The debate over TikTok is a stand-in for a host of political discontents. Here’s how TikTok went from a teen sensation to Washington’s boogeyman:

September 2016

Sept. 26

In China, ByteDance launches the lip-syncing social media app Douyin, the predecessor of what would become TikTok.

September 2017

Sept. 13

ByteDance rebrands Douyin into TikTok, targeting young people around the world.

November 2017

Nov. 9

ByteDance acquires Musical.ly, the popular lip-syncing app with an established following that inspired Douyin’s creation.


July 2018

July 4

Indonesia temporarily bans TikTok, citing concerns of “pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy.” The ban was lifted less than a week later after the app agreed to censor some of its content.

August 2018

Aug. 1

Musical.ly, with its 100 million active users, and TikTok merge into one video app, triggering massive growth.

October 2018

Oct. 31

Worldwide monthly installs of TikTok surpass both Facebook and Instagram for the first time, according to Sensor Tower data, emphasizing the app’s power in an industry long dominated by U.S. companies.

February 2019

Feb. 21

TikTok crosses 1 billion downloads globally on the App Store and Google Play.

Feb. 27

The Federal Trade Commission fines Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, $5.7 million over allegations that it collected children’s data, in violation of federal law. The FTC claims the company didn’t notify parents about the app’s collection of personal information from users under 13. The company had received thousands of complaints from parents of young Musical.ly users.

November 2019

Nov. 1

The U.S. government investigates TikTok over national security concerns, reviewing the 2017 deal in which Beijing-based ByteDance bought Musical.ly for up to $1 billion.

December 2019

Dec. 31

The U.S. Army bans TikTok on military devices, following a Pentagon missive urging employees to uninstall the app. The Pentagon generally avoids weighing in on individual social media companies, and the move reflects burgeoning concerns about the app.

April 2020

April 20

TikTok reaches a total of more than 2 billion downloads on the App Store and Google Play, generating the most downloads for any app in a single quarter.

May 2020

May 18

TikTok hires Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its new CEO, which is seen as an effort to win over American officials skeptical of TikTok’s Chinese roots and to grow the company’s entertainment prospects.

June 2020

June 20

TikTokers and K-pop fans claim they sabotaged Trump’s Tulsa rally registrations by reserving free tickets but having no intention of showing up.

July 2020

July 6

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the United States is considering banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok, citing security and privacy concerns and setting off the Trump administration’s campaign against the app.

July 31

Trump says he plans to bar TikTok from operating in the United States because of national security concerns

August 2020

Aug. 5

Facebook launches Reels, a copycat feature in Instagram designed to compete with TikTok. The release illustrates TikTok’s dominance among younger audiences, as legacy social media companies scramble to replicate its success.

Aug. 6

The U.S. Senate approves a bill banning federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, and Trump signs an executive order to effectively ban the use of TikTok in the United States.

Aug. 24

TikTok sues the Trump administration over its efforts to ban the app.

Aug. 26

Amid the impending ban, Mayer resigns after three months as TikTok’s CEO.

As Washington wavers on TikTok, Beijing exerts control

Aug. 27

After Trump says TikTok can continue to operate domestically with American ownership, Walmart and Microsoft join forces in a bid to acquire the app’s U.S. operations.

September 2020

Sept. 27

A federal judge temporarily blocks the Trump administration’s ban on TikTok.

December 2020

Dec. 7

A second federal judge halts Trump’s TikTok ban, finding that the administration probably overstepped its authority and, by using presidential emergency powers, “acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by failing to consider obvious alternatives.”

June 2021

June 9

President Biden revokes Trump’s TikTok ban but sets up a security review of foreign-owned apps.

March 2022

March 10

The White House briefs TikTok stars about the war in Ukraine, highlighting the app’s ascendant power as a news platform and a key tool in the Biden administration’s efforts to reach young people.

October 2022

Oct. 25

Biden meets with TikTok creators ahead of the midterm elections.

November 2022

Nov. 10

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) call for national ban on TikTok in a Washington Post op-ed, warning of the app’s supposed threat.

Nov. 29

South Dakota bans TikTok from state-owned devices, sparking a wave of state bans.

December 2022

Dec. 14

The Senate passes a bill to ban federal employees from using TikTok on government devices.

Dec. 22

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, fires four employees after an internal investigation found that they had accessed data on two journalists and other U.S. users while attempting to track down a company leak.

January 2023

Jan. 1

TikTok becomes the most-downloaded app in 2022, with about 730 million worldwide installations for the year, compared with Instagram’s 701 million and Facebook’s 641 million.

Jan. 10

Over a frenzied five-week stretch, nearly two dozen state governors and officials restrict TikTok in their states, dialing up the political sentiment against the app.

Jan. 24

The University of Wisconsin joins several universities in banning TikTok on system devices. Students quickly figure out loopholes, using their phones’ data plans rather than school WiFi to access the video app.

February 2023

Feb. 15

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew launches an aggressive push in Washington to prove that the Chinese-owned app is not a national security threat. The diplomatic offensive ends months of silence, a strategy shift for TikTok.

Feb. 27

The White House gives government agencies 30 days to ensure that they do not have TikTok on federal devices.

March 2023

March 15

The Biden administration pushes a plan that would require TikTok’s Chinese owners to divest from the app, in an escalation of the White House’s efforts to address national security concerns.

March 23

Chew appears before Congress for the first time. In a five-hour hearing that highlights the app’s precarious future in the United States, he struggles to alleviate mounting worries that TikTok is a national security threat.

May 2023

May 17

Montana becomes the first state to enact a total ban on the sale and use of TikTok, imposing fines of $10,000 per day on any mobile store making the app available and on TikTok itself if it operates the app within the state. The law is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2024.

November 2023

Nov. 30

A federal judge blocks Montana’s attempted TikTok ban, saying it “oversteps state power.”

January 2024

Jan. 31

Chew appears before Congress for the second time, this time testifying with other social media CEOs about children’s safety online. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) detours the hearing’s topic to question Chew’s citizenship, asking whether he is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Chew says he is not, given that he’s Singaporean.

March 2024

March 7

TikTok users flood congressional office phone lines with calls opposing a TikTok ban after the app surfaced prompts to some users, encouraging them to call their representatives. The same day, a House committee advances a bill targeting TikTok and other apps accused of being controlled by foreign adversaries, including China.

The bill would require that TikTok either be divested from ByteDance or face a ban in the United States.

March 8

President Biden tells reporters he would approve the TikTok bill if Congress passes it. “If they pass it, I’ll sign it,” he said. His stance appears to contrast with that of Trump. Trump, who had previously supported a TikTok ban, posts online the night before that “if you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

April 2024

April 23

Congress passed legislation to ban or force a sale of TikTok. The bill gives ByteDance roughly nine months to sell the app or face a national ban, a deadline that could be extended by 90 days.

April 24

Biden signed the bill into law, starting the clock on the sale or effective ban. China’s government has previously said it would strongly oppose any forced sale of the company.

TikTok has said it will challenge the law in court. Chew said in a video statement that the company expects “to prevail again.”

“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “We are confident, and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts.”

Who might buy TikTok? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plus other burning questions about the new law that could kick TikTok out of the United States. Maybe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/26/tiktok-burning-questions/





The law that President Biden signed Wednesday gives TikTok up to a year to find an owner that isn’t Chinese or be banned in the United States.

The new law and the ultimatum to TikTok’s current owner, Chinese technology giant ByteDance, sound straightforward. But wow, they really aren’t.

I want you to think about three burning questions that don’t have straightforward answers:

Should you just keep using TikTok as though nothing happened?

I'm not sure that we've ever been in a situation quite like this other than Prohibition. A product that's used by roughly half of Americans is essentially illegal as it currently exists (or will be soon).

Sure, other products exist in a legal gray area. Most e-cigarettes and weed that Americans buy are not approved by the government or are downright against the law. Some of you with tinted car windows are breaking the law.

With TikTok, though, you are now in a surreal moment in which the federal government says TikTok is a menace to Americans and to the country’s national security, but it’s also not telling you to dump the app.

“We’re not saying that we do not want Americans to use TikTok,” the White House press secretary said Wednesday, just after the president signed a law declaring that TikTok cannot exist in its current form in the United States.

Whether you or your children use TikTok is now a personal choice.

I imagine that most people will keep using (or not using) TikTok just the way they did before. Except now you face the looming risk that the app could disappear sometime months or years from now.

Who might buy TikTok?

The White House says it wants TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese owner instead of being banned in the United States.

Will a sale happen, and to whom? (Insert shrug emoji.)

TikTok said it will challenge the new law in court. Maybe in the next few months (or years), courts will declare the TikTok forced sale or ban unconstitutional. Maybe they’ll say it’s constitutionally kosher.

Maybe the legal case will take years to resolve. TikTok and people who use the app will remain in limbo the entire time.

Maybe Donald Trump will be elected president later this year and will try to stop a forced sale or ban of TikTok.

Maybe some rich dude or Walmart will sweep in to lead a purchase of TikTok — with or without the secret computer code that tailors videos to each person’s tastes.

Maybe China’s government will try to stop that from happening.

Maybe Earth will get clobbered by a giant asteroid.

What happens next with TikTok is unpredictable. Don’t trust anyone who confidently predicts what’s going to happen.

Will the government try to ban other popular technologies from China?

American officials haven’t made public specific evidence of why they believe TikTok poses such a dire threat of Chinese data harvesting and propaganda.

They also haven’t told you how much you should or shouldn’t worry about other technologies from China.

Is it safe for you to shop on Shein and Temu, two widely used apps that originated from China?

Is it risky for you to own a computer from Chinese company Lenovo or a Motorola smartphone also from Lenovo? Should your kid keep playing the video game “League of Legends,” which is controlled by Chinese tech giant Tencent?

Is it okay that nearly all our smartphones and other electronics are made in Chinese factories?

Will the government keep out electric cars or smartphones from Chinese brands that are affordable and popular in some countries other than the United States?

TikTok may be a unique risk, given how many Americans use the app and get information and news from an app controlled by a Chinese company.

But again, American officials haven’t been upfront with you about where the line might be between dangerous and acceptable technologies from China.


A TikTok ban could also end short-form video as we’ve come to know it

ByteDance’s CapCut editing app made it easy to edit short-form video. The legislation that could ban TikTok also applies to CapCut, congressional aides say.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/29/tiktok-capcut-ban-impact/





With the passage of the bill that could effectively ban TikTok, ByteDance’s other major product, the short form video editor CapCut, is in jeopardy.

Multiple House aides familiar with the bill confirmed to The Washington Post that it’s their understanding that CapCut would be subject to the same divest-or-ban requirement as TikTok.

That, in turn, could lead to the collapse of the entire short form video ecosystem, say creators, users and experts. With short form video becoming the primary way young people express themselves online, a ban of CapCut would stifle self expression for millions of young people, the experts and creators note.

Since relaunching in the United States in 2018, TikTok has transformed the video landscape. Before then, most video content was produced in a horizontal or square format. TikTok mainstreamed fast paced, hyper edited, short form vertical video. As TikTok soared in popularity, short form video became the dominant form of expression for millions of content creators and young users across the internet. TikTok-like short form video features were integrated into Instagram with Reels and on YouTube with YouTube Shorts. Even Netflix and LinkedIn have rolled out short form, vertical content in their algorithmic recommendation feeds.

Producing this content, however, is nearly impossible for the average user without the suite of editing tools in TikTok’s sister video editing app, CapCut. While video editing apps and platforms existed before ByteDance introduced CapCut in April 2020, most were clunky, poorly designed or aimed at a more professional audience, such as Adobe Premiere.

CapCut changed all that.

The app allows any user, whether they have a TikTok account, to easily create incredibly complex and engaging videos on their phone. It makes editing tasks that previously would have taken hours of arduous work and technical know how as easy as clicking a button or two. That’s made CapCut an essential tool for small businesses, educators, content creators and anyone looking to create internet-native video.

“CapCut is the foundation for all the short form vertical video on the internet,” said Brendan Gahan, CEO and co-founder of Creator Authority, an influencer marketing agency in Southern California. “People start on CapCut, then post on YouTube Shorts, Instagram, everywhere.”

Sam Griffin-Ortiz, a video editor and multimedia artist in Oakland, said he would liken CapCut’s impact on social media “to the impact of the electric guitar on music in the 20th century.”

Videos created on TikTok and CapCut are “their own language,” said Nathan Preston, who operates the meme account @Northwest_MCM_Wholesale on Instagram. Preston, like many Instagram creators, leverages CapCut and TikTok’s suite of creative editing tools to make his videos, which he then posts to other platforms.

“I’m a trained design professional,” he said. “I have Adobe Premiere, I know how to use Final Cut and all that stuff. CapCut is easier, more intuitive. We’re losing something if it goes away. If it goes away, it will make me less inclined to make whatever the hell I make.”

CapCut has become so synonymous with online videos that its pre-formatted video templates frequently trend across other platforms, such as Instagram Reels. “Ninety percent of the Reels I see on Instagram I can tell the exact CapCut pro template they’ve used,” said Griffin-Ortiz.

Michael Wong, the founder of @AsianVerified, a humor media company that operates on Instagram and YouTube, said that CapCut is essential to making content that performs well online. “It’s a specific style,” he said. “You’ll see ads on Reddit and all over made to mimic the CapCut look.”

No other major social media platform offers the same suite of creative tools that CapCut offers, creators said. Creating captions, on screen animations, various visual effects are all as easy as clicking a button or two on CapCut; recreating those same effects in Adobe Premiere or After Effects (other editing platforms) would take hours.

“If you make something natively on Instagram it looks cheugy,” said Wong, (using the internet slang term to mean corny and passé).

Lauren Moore, the founder and creator of Book Huddle, an online book community, said content created in CapCut consistently outperforms content made using other programs. The tools the platform offers automatically make nearly any piece of content more engaging, she explained.

“Most video editing tools require you to have all the assets and a vision in mind; you’re really starting with a blank slate,” she said. “With CapCut, it takes you about three steps ahead from that blank slate. You don’t have to be a knowledgeable video editor to be able to create really effective viral content.”

That viral content performs particularly well outside the ByteDance ecosystem. The style of editing pioneered by MrBeast, called “retention editing,” was birthed from CapCut.

“Everyone’s using the same basic tools,” Noah Kettle, co-founder of Moke Media Co., a video editing and social media monetization consultancy, told The Post last month. “I’ve seen 10 to 15 creators use the exact same animated money-on-screen effect, and it’s all from CapCut.”

CapCut users are scrambling since news of the potential TikTok ban broke. Some said they were worried they wouldn’t be able to continue to make videos without access to CapCut.

“There’s a unique form of artistry that CapCut enables,” said Moore. “Social media is all about connection, and a really big part of connecting with other people is creating content that elicits an emotional reaction or shows an emotional side of yourself. By using cap cuts tools, you can quickly and easily create a video to demonstrate what’s on your mind, or how you’re feeling about things, and that is going to be so much harder to do if we don’t have CapCut at our disposal.”

Many creators spoke about the potential removal of these creative tools as if there were suddenly a ban on language. They said that while older people seem to harbor a hostility toward short form, highly edited video, it has become an essential mode of expression.

“It’s like you’re taking away a language from people,” said Griffin-Ortiz. “Banning CapCut would be the book burning of the digital age. I think we’ll look back on this time and history and see it in a lens very similar to book burnings.”

Creators who are immersed in the short form online video world said that reverting to previous tools would feel like a step back.

“CapCut has transformed the way a lot of content creators create video online,” said Connor Clary, a Gen Z content creator and potter in Kansas City, Mo. “Before CapCut existed, short form video was a lot simpler. It was a lot of basic, one take videos. CapCut elevated vertical video.”

Len Necefer, who runs the Instagram account @sonoran.avalance.center aimed at raising awareness around the climate crisis, said that CapCut is a crucial tool when it comes to creating pieces of media that feel native to young people. “CapCut allows me to craft videos and messaging in a style that reaches Gen Z voters,” he said. “We’ve been doing voter outreach and turning out the vote, and that’s where we’ve used CapCut the most. It allows us to target the younger audience in a more playful way.”

While TikTok is the law’s main focus, the terms of the legislation are written to apply to any app that qualifies as a “foreign adversary controlled application.” The law defines a foreign adversary controlled application as any app that’s operated by ByteDance, TikTok, or a subsidiary of either of the two — which would presumably include CapCut.

CapCut has so far received relatively little mention in the debate surrounding the TikTok ban. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wa.), one of the bill’s architects, did mention it twice in her opening statements at a March hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, claiming that CapCut is subject to the influence of the Chinese Communist Party, though she provided no evidence to support her claims.

Gahan said the TikTok ban is drastic, but cutting off CapCut could have just as far-reaching impact on the online landscape.

If a CapCut ban were to pass alongside TikTok, “there’s a mode of self expression that’s going to be disappearing from the internet,” he said.

TikTok files court challenge to U.S. law that could lead to ban

The filing citing First Amendment and other grounds could prove to be an existential fight for one of the world’s most popular apps.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/07/tiktok-legal-challenge-law-ban/





TikTok and its parent company ByteDance challenged the U.S. government in a legal filing Tuesday over a new law forcing the sale or ban of the social media giant, igniting a high-stakes court battle in Washington that could prove to be an existential fight for one of the world’s most popular apps.

President Biden signed a law last month demanding that China-based ByteDance sell TikTok within a year or be banned across the United States, arguing that the Chinese government could use the app to spy on Americans or secretly shape public opinion.

But the companies in their petition for review contend that the law violates the First Amendment rights of its 170 million U.S. accounts in an “extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power” based on vaguely expressed national security concerns.

“Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional, in fact, that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all, but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership,” the challenge states.

“In reality, there is no choice,” it adds. A forced sale “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”

The case will set up a showdown for the Biden administration, which has touted the law as a way to avoid the pitfalls that doomed the Trump administration’s previous ban attempt.

A loss in court for the government would set back years of backroom federal strategizing that produced one of the few national technology policies passed by Congress in two decades.

A win would force a change in control over the biggest foreign-owned tech platform to achieve mainstream prominence in the United States, disrupting what has become a potent force in the online creator economy and a popular driver of American entrepreneurship and entertainment.

ByteDance, a private company that valued itself last year at $268 billion, has vowed to fight what it calls an unconstitutional government overreach.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew said in a TikTok video last month. “The facts and the Constitution are on our side.”

In its 67-page petition for review of the law’s constitutionality, filed against Attorney General Merrick Garland, TikTok and ByteDance argue that the law would give the government unprecedented power to control or dismantle a speech platform it dislikes.

It also challenges the government for targeting TikTok and ByteDance by name in the law, as opposed to passing broader tech regulations for privacy or transparency that would cover the industry at large.

“If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down,” the filing says. “Congress has never before crafted a two-tiered speech regime with one set of rules for one named platform, and another set of rules for everyone else.”

The U.S. has yet to show evidence that China has collected TikTok’s user data for espionage or skewed its recommendation algorithm for propaganda, though the law’s sponsors have said the possibility of future influence is cause enough for aggressive action.

TikTok and ByteDance contend that the government has acted not with “any proof of a compelling interest, but on speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation — concerns that, even if grounded in fact, could be addressed through far less restrictive and more narrowly tailored means.”

The companies also claim that the government did not engage seriously with TikTok’s efforts to assuage national-security concerns, including its $2 billion plan, known as “Project Texas,” to safeguard Americans’ user data in a U.S. subsidiary closely overseen by federal authorities.

The companies said they made “extraordinary” commitments as part of a draft National Security Agreement that would have given the government the authority to shut TikTok down if the companies violated the agreement.

“Congress tossed this tailored agreement aside, in favor of the politically expedient and punitive approach of targeting for disfavor one publisher and speaker,” the challenge states.

Extracting TikTok from the company that has developed and managed it, the challenge says, would be infeasible given the platform's technical underpinnings, including its globally produced library of videos, its interwoven network of data centers and its integrated systems for video editing, promotion and moderation.

China has also vowed to use its export controls to block the sale of TikTok's backbone, its video-recommendation algorithm, which would force any new buyer to rebuild a critical component that many in Silicon Valley have spent years working to emulate.

“The platform consists of millions of lines of software code that have been painstakingly developed by thousands of engineers over multiple years,” the challenge says. “Such a fundamental rearchitecting is not remotely feasible” under a 270-day deadline.

The challenge also seeks to use members of Congress’ words against it, noting that the law’s supporters said they were also motivated by their distaste for the videos on the platform related to the Israel-Gaza war and other issues — a content-specific decision that First Amendment scholars say could weaken the government’s case.

What’s more, the challenge says, it “would force the TikTok U.S. platform to “become an ‘island’ where Americans would have an experience detached from the rest of the” world.

TikTok sued the U.S. in 2020 and won, with a district judge in D.C. saying then-president Donald Trump’s ban order had overstepped its legal bounds. A federal judge in Pennsylvania later that year sided with TikTok creators over administration officials, and a third federal judge in Montana last year said the state’s TikTok ban “violates the Constitution in more ways than one.”

But TikTok has never fought in the court it’s stepping into: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the main venue for appeals of administrative and constitutional law. The law designated the high-level appeals court as the “exclusive jurisdiction” for any challenge, meaning a loss for TikTok can only be overturned by the Supreme Court.

And while Trump’s executive order was grounded in an ill-fitting 1977 law expanding the president’s power over international commerce during a national emergency, TikTok and ByteDance must grapple with a law drafted specifically with help from Justice Department officials intended to help it survive legal assault.

The companies are asking that the law’s enforcement be halted until the challenge is resolved, but such injunctions are not guaranteed. ByteDance’s current sale deadline is Jan. 19, a day before the inauguration, though the government could grant a 90-day extension if it declares progress on a sale is underway.

The legal challenge is being led by Erich Andersen, a former Microsoft attorney who worked as ByteDance’s general counsel during its past legal skirmishes and represented the company in its negotiations with federal officials before the law was passed.

Underscoring the severity of the fight, ByteDance said Andersen will shift into a new role as “special counsel,” focused exclusively on driving “the company’s effort to overturn the unconstitutional ban legislation in the U.S.”

The Trump administration had appealed the district court freeze of its TikTok ban in 2020 to the D.C. Circuit appeals court, where the new challenge will be tried. But the Biden administration, upon taking power in 2021, asked the court to dismiss the government’s appeals, saying it wanted to establish a more deliberative process than the Trump orders that one official said then hadn’t been “implemented in the soundest fashion.”

Some legal scholars said TikTok will have a solid case in arguing that the government failed to consider potential resolutions for its concerns that wouldn’t be so disruptive to Americans’ rights of free expression. But others suspect the new effort could succeed due to its firmer legal footing and the court’s traditional deference to the legislative branch on national security threats, even in cases involving restrictions of speech.

The D.C. Circuit appeals court in 2018 said Congress was within its rights to ban software by Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab from federal devices, siding with the government’s claims of protecting American security and overruling the company’s complaints that the move was targeted punishment.

TikTok and ByteDance’s challenge is expected to be joined later by separate legal action from TikTok creators, who could contend, as they have in previous cases, that the government would block them from an important channel for small business and self-expression.

Free-speech groups are also expected to lend their support to the companies’ challenge. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a brief late Monday supporting the legal challenge to Montana’s TikTok ban, writing that “the practice of restricting citizens’ access to information, ideas and media from abroad is one that has historically been associated with repressive regimes.”