WASHINGTON—Key congress members and their aides say they’ve been besieged by phone calls triggered by a campaign sent out by Chinese social media giant TikTok.
Some of their constituents were delivered full-screen notifications on TikTok.
“Tell your Senator how important TikTok is to you. Ask them to vote no on the TikTok ban,” the notification said.
“Now, if the Senate votes, the future of creativity and communities you love on TikTok could be shut down.”
The notification then urged users to enter their zip code to locate their senator’s phone number.
“Okay, listen, if you ban TikTok, I will find you and shoot you,“ one female caller says as others giggle in the background. ”That’s people’s job, and that’s my only entertainment. And people make money off there, too, you know. I’m trying to get rich like that. Anyways, I’ll shoot you and find you and cut you into pieces. Bye!”
The campaign began targeting members of the House ahead of a vote by the House Energy and Commerce Committee to move the bill to the House floor without giving the normally required week’s notice. After the legislation passed the House on March 13 in a 352–65 vote, senators began receiving the same calls.
It is too early to say whether TikTok’s mobilization campaign will bear fruit. It could just as easily scare lawmakers into action against the company rather than for it.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is one of many in the Senate who say that TikTok’s lobbying campaign is all the more reason to swiftly sever ties between the company and China.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing, and both companies have a dubious history of suppressing content the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) finds displeasing.
“If TikTok wants to stay in the U.S. marketplace, they need to separate from the CCP’s control—plain and simple,” Ms. Blackburn told The Epoch Times.
“The Senate should take this issue up swiftly to protect our national security interests, and we should declassify the information given to Congress so that the American public can understand the exact threat we’re facing.”
TikTok is among the world’s most popular social media platforms, with more than 150 million users in the United States, many of whom get their news primarily from the platform.
That popularity, combined with the possibility that the platform could receive editorial direction from the CCP, creates an imminent threat, according to Ms. Blackburn and others in Congress.
It is unclear how much indirect control the CCP retains over ByteDance and TikTok. However, the regime purchased a “golden share” in ByteDance’s Chinese subsidiary in 2019, which could allow it to influence how the company’s board votes on key decisions. A golden share is usually a small amount of shares, but the stake gives the owner special voting powers, including veto power.
There are also growing indicators that some influencers on the platform are coordinating with the regime, according to Chihhao Yu, co-director of the Taiwan Information Environment Research Center.
Pro-CCP propaganda is now beginning to appear on TikTok in some instances before being published on Douyin, the version of the app available in China.
“Some of these TikTok videos are published before their Douyin counterparts by [Chinese] state media,” Mr. Yu said during an April 8 talk in Washington.
“So that’s an even stronger signal, indicating that these influencers on TikTok are having at least some kind of coordination with [Chinese] actors.”
Still, Mr. Yu said that the proliferation of misinformation and foreign influence operations online isn’t unique to TikTok. Instead, he said, it’s one problem among several.
“There are two more things: the top one is personal data security, and No. 2 is the addictiveness of the platform,” Mr. Yu said.
Data Security
Ms. Blackburn likewise believes that the foremost threat posed by TikTok is that ByteDance is required by law in China to provide any data it has to the CCP upon request, including whatever sensitive personal information it may have collected on Americans through TikTok.“TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is tied to the Chinese Communist Party by strict laws in Beijing that force companies to hand over users’ personal data,” Ms. Blackburn said.
Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr warned that TikTok is being used to collect troves of information on millions of American users, including “search and browsing history, keystroke patterns, biometrics, and location information.”
Indeed, the most recent version of the TikTok legislation was crafted in large part due to the threat posed by China’s security laws.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who chairs the influential House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP, said that’s why the bill includes language to force the divestiture of any social media company believed to be under the control of U.S. foes.
“This bill is squarely focused on preventing foreign adversaries—China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran—from controlling social media apps in the U.S.,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times.
“Under ByteDance’s ownership structure, the Chinese government not only has the ability to surveil Americans’ user data but also manipulate TikTok’s algorithm and conduct influence operations on Americans’ ‘For You’ pages,” he said.
“We simply cannot continue to allow an app controlled by our nation’s foremost adversary to take over the American media landscape.”
Opposition to TikTok Ban Grows
TikTok has painted the bill as a targeted ban on its operations and an assault on freedom of speech.“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” a TikTok spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
Opposition to the effort against TikTok is also growing in Congress, with a small but bipartisan minority in both chambers expressing numerous concerns about the legislation.
Speaking during the House vote on the legislation, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) suggested that the bill could become a “Trojan horse” for perpetual overreach from the executive branch as it would empower the president to force the sale of social media companies deemed even indirectly influenced by foreign powers.
“I know the sponsors of this bill are sincere in their concerns and in their effort to protect Americans,” Mr. Massie said.
“[But] We don’t need to be protected by the government from information.”
There is also the question of whether the U.S. intelligence community has independently verified any of the claims that the CCP has directed the promotion or suppression of content on TikTok through ByteDance.
For this reason, Ms. Blackburn and many others in Congress have requested that their classified briefings on the subject be made public.
Some, however, have suggested that declassification wouldn’t unveil a unique threat.
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said prior to the House vote that “not a single thing” Congress has heard in its classified security briefings is unique to TikTok, but pervades all social media.
Mr. Massie also highlighted numerous contentions about the bill’s premise and legality, including the fact that Bytedance is not actually owned by the CCP or even majority-owned by Chinese investors, that the bill has no sunset clause, and that the bill would require all appeals to be handled through the District of Columbia Court of Appeals rather than the states.
There is also the issue of whether the bill is lawful, given its reliance on presidential authority, an issue that several lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have spoken about.
That’s because the Cold War-era Berman Amendments revoked the Executive Office’s authority to ban or regulate the free flow of any “informational materials” to American citizens, including foreign propaganda.
“One of the key differences between us and those adversaries is the fact that they shut down newspapers, broadcast stations, and social media platforms. We do not,” Mr. Himes said.
What’s Next?
For now, the bill’s future remains uncertain, though it’s clear it won’t sail through the Senate with the speed that it did the House.During his last days in office, Mr. Gallagher is playing the role of an unofficial whip, urging the Senate to take up the legislation as quickly as possible for fear that the CCP could use TikTok to promote propaganda ahead of the U.S. election cycle.
“This bill passed in overwhelming fashion with 352 votes in the House of Representatives, which I have not seen on something this important in my eight years in Congress,” Mr. Gallagher said.
“This level of support makes it impossible for the Senate to ignore. The White House has signaled that they will sign the bill if and when it passes the Senate, and I know Leader Schumer is very concerned about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
Reflecting on Taiwan’s recent experience with CCP election interference, Mr. Yu acknowledged the threat posed by the regime’s influence on social media.
Noting his three major concerns—CCP influence, data security, and addictiveness—he concluded that the freedom to speak and share ideas should not be curbed. Instead, he said, the problem of CCP misinformation would be solved by encouraging the exchange of debate and ideas rather than eliminating it.
“I think we need to address all [the] three big problems of TikTok and maybe, by extension, all social media platforms and what all these tech tools are doing to our democratic processes,” Mr. Yu said.
“Freedom of speech is why we do this—because we want a healthy democracy. It’s not because we want to get rid of something when we don’t want something in our country. We want a healthy functional debate of our country’s direction.”
