At the end of January, CEOs for all the major social media companies, TikTok, X, Meta, Discord and Snap, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the failure of their platforms to protect their biggest consumers- children. This hearing comes almost a year after the House Energy and Commerce committee held their own hearing, which saw TikTok CEO Shou Chew in his Congressional debut give evasive answers and hollow platitudes about the safety of TikTok for its users. Unfortunately, in the months since that hearing and despite continued evidence of the danger posed by TikTok to American consumers, Congressional leaders have declined to take action to curb the influence TikTok exerts in this country. If current relations with China tell us anything, it is that they are playing a long game; and TikTok is just one instrument they will use in their push for world supremacy. The time for action is now.
TikTok's ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), through its parent company ByteDance, prompted FBI Director Chris Wray in 2022 to warn Members of Congress that he considered TikTok a national security threat. The CCP exerts extensive power over private companies within their country, and Chinese national security laws require these companies to share their information with the CCP when demanded. With reports indicating that over one-third of US adults under the age of thirty regularly get their news from social networking platforms like TikTok, there is justifiable concern that the Party is using TikTok’s algorithms to shape public opinion and push propaganda to impressionable youth while at the same time collecting data on American users.
The “Letter to America” trend that captured national attention in November reinforced the fear that China is, indeed, using TikTok as a vehicle to shape public perception in the US. In an age of geopolitical competition, where all the major world powers are trying to gain an advantage through online manipulation and spying, this should not be shocking. That they were seemingly successful in convincing young people that a butcher like Osama bin Laden was justified in murdering thousands of people in a single day is more of an indictment on our education system than it is on anything else.
Any call to ban TikTok as a means of information management will appropriately run into First Amendment challenges. Forms of expression like those seen on social media platforms, however unpalatable, are - and should be - protected.
It is therefore incumbent upon parents to be the first line of defense for their children. I have three boys, and this is a dynamic that we deal with in our house all the time. Pay attention to what your kids are being taught in schools, and make sure they are learning history. Edmund
Burke famously said: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Not only do our children need to know history, but we need to equip them to analyze the past so that they have the context to be able to avoid repeating its lessons. Additionally, parents need to have regular
conversations about their children’s social media footprint, and be aware of the content they are consuming online. Today’s social media-focused world means that parental involvement is no longer just ideal, but essential!
China’s ability to use TikTok to collect enormous amounts of data on its users and utilize its powerful algorithms to push harmful content to children poses an entirely different threat - one with national security implications.
China’s attempts to collect data on Americans are not new phenomena. They are so well known, in fact, that the National Counterintelligence and Security Center released a paper in 2021 calling on US companies to step up efforts to secure their genetic information against a Chinese push to “develop the world’s largest bio-database.” There are new articles almost daily, detailing how China has expanded from stealing US intellectual property to gathering intelligence about our critical infrastructure systems and government agencies. In 2022, an undocumented Chinese-owned bio lab was discovered in Reedley, CA. This lab was run by a People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizen who was wanted for intellectual property theft and had received millions of dollars from PRC linked banks. We’ve seen China fly a spy balloon across our country in an attempt to gather sensitive American data. China’s track record leaves no doubt that the CCP would exercise its power over ByteDance to utilize its popular app as another means to gather data from US-based customers.
While limiting speech is not allowed under the Constitution, protecting American consumers is. It is under that authority that Congress should act.
Our elected representatives need to follow the lead of states who are using their consumer protection laws to argue that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not protect a social media company when it is the company itself misleading consumers on issues of safety. For TikTok specifically, the allegation is that the company is lying to its customers about its ties to the CCP through ByteDance and downplaying the threat that relationship poses to national security.
As tensions between the United States and China continue to simmer, we need to be clear-eyed on China’s ultimate goal: to supplant the United States as the predominant world superpower by exploiting any advantage at their disposal. Make no mistake, China is using TikTok as it maneuvers for the upper hand. In this high stakes battle for world supremacy, the US must act now to remove TikTok as a weapon from China’s arsenal.
Tiffany Smiley, a Washington native, is a national veterans advocate and was a 2022 candidate for the United States Senate. In 2023 she launched Endeavor PAC, which supports candidates with clear agendas and a firm commitment to conservative principles; and Rescuing the American Dream (RAD), a policy organization committed to developing, promoting, and effectively communicating solutions that will directly help American workers and their families.