What’s happening with TikTok and WeChat?
President Trump has signed executive orders to ban the TikTok and WeChat apps from being distributed in the United States.
On August 6, 2020, President Trump issued two executive orders with the intent of banning TikTok and WeChat from use within the United States. The details of these orders are complicated, but have attracted intrigue due to the far-reaching impacts they could have in technology, commerce, foreign policy, politics, and more.
TikTok
TikTok is an addictive social media app that allows users to post and share videos up to 60 seconds long; its primary interface is an endless "For You" feed that users can scroll through, whose content varies based on users' interests. It has had a unique success in building user engagement through this format, resulting in a staggering reported valuation of $60 billion, in large part due to its unique algorithm.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a multinational Chinese company. In 2017, ByteDance acquired the similar video-sharing app Musical.ly, which had begun to gain traction among American users, and merged it with TikTok. At the same time, ByteDance operates a parallel app for Chinese users, Douyin, which is subject to Chinese censorship.
“TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.”
One of the main concerns critics have raised about TikTok is its data collection and privacy practices, many of which could be best described as questionable. The app repeatedly accessed iPhone users' clipboard data from other apps, and violated Google policies by collecting MAC addresses of devices on Android. TikTok is also the subject of a class action lawsuit that claims it is sending minors' data to China. However, while concerning, TikTok's practices may not be significantly worse than those of other apps. Experts such as Kristin Martin, a professor in technology ethics at Notre Dame University, have said that "[TikTok's] data collection and sharing practices are fairly standard in the industry."
Additionally, because ByteDance is a Chinese company, national security experts have raised concerns about the influence of the Chinese government, given its strict censorship rules on Internet content, or the potential that data about American users could be used for espionage. ByteDance has gone to great lengths to emphasize the independence of the two apps: all of TikTok's user data is stored in Virginia and Singapore; and in response to Hong Kong's national security law which could force companies to provide data to the Chinese government, TikTok pulled out entirely from Hong Kong, going even further than Twitter, Google, and Facebook. However, former workers have made credible claims that moderation was influenced by ByteDance executives in China.
Executive orders
Trump's initial executive order targeting TikTok cites national security as its rationale, warning of the dangers of TikTok collecting the user information of Americans, and the potential that this information could be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party. However, this order has also raised First Amendment concerns, given that it used an emergency powers act to unilaterally ban a company with a significant presence in the United States — and would restrict the speech of the app's 100 million American users. Though the order does not ban Americans from using TikTok, it would prevent app stores from hosting TikTok, which would eventually kill the app since users would no longer be able to download updates.
Trump issued a second order on August 15, 2020, that overturns ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, and orders it to divest from assets and data related to TikTok's operations in the United States. This order is the result of a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) investigation into the acquisition that began in November 2019. Such an action has precedent: Chinese company Kunlun was forced to divest from Grindr after purchasing it in 2018. The TikTok order is particularly notable both because it is retroactive, and because both Musical.ly and TikTok were Chinese-owned at the time of the acquisition. But since CFIUS has jurisdiction over any company that does business in the United States, and it thus has the authority to retroactively disapprove the deal, even if there was no reason to believe that the deal would affect US national security at the time.
For the time being, a preliminary injunction has prevented TikTok from being removed from app stores. However, the divestment order remains in place, and so negotiations on the future ownership of TikTok have continued.
New ownership
To avoid a ban, ByteDance has been engaged in talks to find a way to make TikTok American-owned, as Trump has demanded. A confusing series of negotiations ensued, where Microsoft was once seen as likely to acquire TikTok's operations. The resulting proposal, however, instead has Oracle and Walmart take a partial stake in a new US-based company called TikTok Global. This new company would be 12.5% owned by Oracle, 7.5% owned by Walmart, and 80% owned by ByteDance. This would make TikTok Global 53% owned by Americans according to some clever accounting, because ByteDance itself has American investors, or something like that — the details are still unclear, with differing accounts from Oracle and ByteDance. Though Trump has signaled approval for the initial concept of the deal, the deal also needs to gain the approval of Chinese regulators.
“But the United States should be reimbursed or should be paid a substantial amount of money, because without the United States they don’t have anything.”
However, the actions by the Trump administration have raised eyebrows. In his initial statements, Trump has proposed that the deal provide a "substantial amount of money" to the US Treasury, a demand with no legal basis, and which amounts to little more than extortion. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it a "finder's fee" that would "send the wrong message about America's rule of law". Trump has since trumpeted the number of $5 billion in the resulting agreement; however, ByteDance claims that this price is simply an estimate of the tax revenue that TikTok might bring into the US.
Moreover, Trump has suggested that this $5 billion be directed towards an initiative to teach Americans “real” history, following his criticism of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which seeks to analyze American history in the context of slavery. Such suggestions have not helped alleviate concerns that Trump’s actions are politically motivated.
Although the TikTok ban has garnered the most attention, Trump's attempted ban of the WeChat app could be even more impactful for the Chinese diaspora. WeChat, a messaging app, is ubiquitous in China, not only for messaging, but also for a plethora of other applications, from paying for food to hailing a rideshare. But it is also one of the only connections between the increasingly disjointed internets of China and the Western world. It is commonly used by Americans to stay connected with relatives in China; to join video calls; to send money; and for business purposes.
WeChat has been criticized for its role in spreading false information, as well as instances in which it has apparently censored messages even between individuals outside of China. But a ban would be devastating to the many Americans who rely on the app, and makes little sense compared to alternative ways of addressing the same issues. For now, a temporary injunction has delayed the ban so that a lawsuit against the ban can take place, but the future of WeChat in the US remains tenuous.
Anti-Chinese rhetoric
Trump's attempts to ban WeChat and TikTok can be best understood in the context of the political direction of his re-election campaign. Trump's personal animus towards TikTok may be motivated in part by a coordinated attempt by TikTok users and K-pop fans to flood his Tulsa rally with fake signups in June. However, more relevant is that throughout his term, Trump has taken an aggressive stance towards China, in particular with regards to international trade. This is in line with the way he has tried to draw a contrast to Biden during his re-election campaign: "China ate your lunch, Joe", he quipped during his first debate, even as Biden pointed out that the US trade deficit with China has only increased since Trump's tariffs were imposed.
The political motivation behind the TikTok ban is demonstrated by the Trump campaign's anti-TikTok ads that it ran on Facebook. The advertisements used the TikTok clipboard data issue, which also applied to other apps including the New York Times, to claim that "China is spying on you". The ads also, inexplicably, asked users to sign a petition asking Trump to ban TikTok.
The Trump campaign launched ads on Facebook that used the fact that TikTok collects clipboard data as evidence that “China is spying on you”. (
The bans have a special resonance during the coronavirus pandemic, during which the President has ramped up rhetoric blaming China, and in particular the Chinese Communist Party, for the pandemic. Though these claims have merit, Trump has repeatedly deployed this rhetoric to deflect blame for his administration's failure to save American lives from being lost, as evidenced by Republican party memos that directed Senate candidates to attack China. To do so, he has extended his practice of giving nicknames to Democratic politicians to COVID-19 itself, calling it alternately the "China virus" or the "kung flu".
Unfortunately, such rhetoric has real-world consequences. What is undoubtedly clear is that Trump's anti-Chinese rhetoric has led to an unprecedented increase in hostility against Asian-Americans, culminating in harassment and even violence. Though Trump's latest immigration ban may only target members of the Chinese Communist Party, it would be foolish to assume that the Trump supporters chanting "kung flu" at his rallies will limit their frustrations in a similar way. The attempts to ban WeChat and TikTok entirely are only a continuation of this same anti-China stance, and continue the harm he has done to the Chinese-American community by severing one of the major remaining links between the Chinese and American internet.
Conclusion
Trump’s orders to ban the TikTok and WeChat apps will do little to protect Americans: other apps like Facebook collect even more information than TikTok does, which can then be sold to other companies in ways that aren’t transparent. Though some concerned companies and individuals have already decided not to use TikTok due to security concerns, it's not clear why banning TikTok and WeChat for all Americans is the right answer. Such an action only harms the Americans who use and rely on those apps every day.
The bans will also curb freedom of expression on an app that millions of Americans use to express themselves every day. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others, has pointed out the hypocrisy of Trump's bans: while claiming that he wants to protect Americans from China's authoritarian government, he is adopting its strategy of stifling free expression through censorship.
The CFIUS action that requires ByteDance to divest from TikTok, on the other hand, is a more reasoned approach that attempts to address legitimate national security concerns. However, these concerns have been overshadowed by Trump’s overt politicization of the deal. As yet another example, Oracle was selected as a partner after Trump openly endorsed Oracle for the job. But the CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison, has publicly expressed his support for Trump, and even held fundraisers for his reelection campaign.
When the President signs an executive order banning your app from the US, then decides you can stay as long as you sell part of your company to one of his donors.
Take this into account, and it's hard to see how Trump's actions are anything but purely political. That Trump is so openly using regulatory authority for political purposes only serves to undermine confidence in the rule of law in America. “It sure looks to all the world like U.S. government meddling that rewarded political allies,” writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which is not particularly known for its pro-China stances.
If Trump is truly concerned about Americans' privacy, a better approach would be privacy legislation that applies to all companies, not just TikTok. Even Facebook has complained that current privacy laws are insufficient in the US! Such legislation would follow in the footsteps of the GDPR in Europe and the CCPA in California: though imperfect, these laws have provided people with control over how their data is used and sold, for which no effective regulation currently exists across the US. There is bipartisan support for such action: two substantially similar bills from Republicans and Democrats are slowly making their way through Congress, with substantial similarities, and would likely be able to pass if the President made them a priority.