Breaking Down the TikTok Ban: Key Facts

A man holds a phone displaying the TikTok app on Aug. 11, 2024. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times

For years, questions about security have surrounded the popular social media app TikTok because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Now, American users are facing a national ban due to the Supreme Court’s Jan. 17 decision to uphold a lower court’s law requiring the parent company, ByteDance, to either divest ownership or shut down in the United States.

Should no major structural changes occur within TikTok’s ownership, the app will be forced to cease operations in the United States on Jan. 19.

TikTok, which was brought to life in China in 2016 and officially launched in the United States in 2018, grew exponentially following TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly in November of 2017.

Even before the massive growth of TikTok in the United States in 2020, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called attention to security concerns with the operation and growth of Chinese-owned apps in the United States in an Oct. 9, 2019, letter to then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Rubio said that Chinese-owned apps, such as TikTok, “are increasingly being used to censor content and silence open discussion on topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government and Communist Party.”

The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) estimated in late 2019 that there were 400 million TikTok users in China, 80 million in the United States, and 120 million across other nations.

As a result of the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown, the social media platform saw tremendous growth by 2023, with more than 170 million monthly users in the United States, uploading 5.5 billion videos that obtained 13 trillion views.

Half of those views took place outside the United States, and domestic viewers took in foreign-originating content over 2.7 trillion times in the same year.

The Department of Justice began its court battle with TikTok following the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (Divestiture Act), which was signed into law in April of 2024 by President Joe Biden as a part of the foreign aid package.

The law required that unless parent company ByteDance sells off its U.S. holdings, app retailers and web hosts in the United States will be unable to host TikTok.

TikTok challenged the law in court on First Amendment grounds, and lawmakers spoke up in support of the implementation of the law.

One bipartisan group of 50 lawmakers from 21 states offered their support of the DOJ’s enforcement mandating that China-based ByteDance divest its U.S. TikTok assets or face a ban, citing concerns about the CCP.

Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the chair and ranking Democrat member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, respectively, filed an amicus brief in opposition to TikTok’s legal claims.

Legislators are worried that because ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is a Chinese corporation, it must comply with Chinese law and provide user data gathered from TikTok in order to spy on Americans.

“The Chinese Communist Party ... exercises overwhelming influence over ByteDance. TikTok is a valuable tool for conducting corporate and international espionage, and it may allow the Chinese Communist Party to track the real-time locations of public officials, journalists, and other individuals adverse to the Chinese Communist Party’s interests,” they wrote.

“Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the risk of the Chinese Communist Party accessing and exploiting their data.”

TikTok responded to the brief in a statement that “these filings ignore the fact that Congress passed the TikTok ban with no record supporting the government’s claims.”

“Moreover, these filings do nothing to change the fact that the Constitution is on our side as the TikTok ban would violate the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans who use TikTok,” the company said.

The headquarters of ByteDance, the parent company of video sharing app TikTok, is seen in Beijing on Sept. 16, 2020. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

Alleged Child Endangerment

In addition to the CCP-related security concerns, TikTok has been the subject of lawsuits initiated by both the Biden administration and Texas concerning possible dangers to children.

The Biden administration brought suit in August of last year, asserting that TikTok and its parent company failed to ensure children’s data privacy on their platform.

The complaint said the company is in violation of a 2019 court order and has bypassed parental consent in keeping the children’s personal information, such as email addresses.

The DOJ also said that TikTok did not honor parents’ requests to delete children’s accounts.

Additionally, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a suit filed this month against TikTok that the company allegedly exposed children to inappropriate content and misled parents and children about the addictive nature of the app.

“While TikTok has established itself as one of the most popular apps in Texas, it has utterly disregarded the health and safety of Texas minors in the process,” the Jan. 9 lawsuit stated.

“TikTok is rife with profanity, sexual content, violence, mature themes, and drug and alcohol content. In an investigation of TikTok, the state discovered virtually endless amounts of extreme and mature videos presented to minors as young as 13—some with millions of views.”

The lawsuit alleged that TikTok specifically designed the software to be addictive for children. It said that the app’s endless video scrolling lures users into “a dreamlike state of content consumption,” which boosts advertising and massive earnings.

Efforts to Save the App

At a Dec. 4 Mar-a-Lago, Florida news conference, President-elect Donald Trump credited TikTok with increasing his support among young people and said to have “a warm spot” for the app.

On Jan. 15 Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), who was recently appointed as the national security adviser to Trump, disclosed to Fox News anchor Bret Baier in response to inquiries about a report that the incoming U.S. leader is looking into ways to preserve TikTok.

Baier noted that one of these options could be an executive order temporarily halting the implementation of the divest-or-ban law for 60 to 90 days.

This effort was referenced by TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew when he responded to the Supreme Court ruling in a video on Jan. 17.

“I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States,” he said.

In a private effort that would follow the divestiture option to keep TikTok alive and well, Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary has jumped into the fray.

According to a Jan. 6 press release, O'Leary joined forces with The People’s Bid, an initiative, led by business executive and Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt, to purchase TikTok’s U.S. assets to rebuild the platform and prioritize privacy.

At the end of his comments on the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law that could ban his app, the TikTok CEO thanked the app’s American users for their support and said: “More to come.”

“We will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery as well as the source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” he said.