MAGA’s next wave of influencers saved TikTok
- TikTok was on the verge of being banned in the US due to concerns over national security and data harvesting by the Chinese government.
- A bipartisan bill passed Congress, requiring ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the app or face an outright ban.
- Despite this, TikTok remains online under Chinese ownership, with its fate now hanging in the balance between the US and China.
- The ban was motivated by MAGA supporters’ concerns over the app’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party and perceived support for Palestine.
- TikTok’s survival is now dependent on negotiations between the US and China, which could determine the app’s future in the country.
The death knell for American TikTok should have been on March 13th, 2024, when Congress voted on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis to force its parent company to sell the app or face an outright ban. Rarely do you ever see Republicans and Democrats in agreement over anything, but both sides saw the app as a national security threat and worried that the Chinese government would use it to sow misinformation and secretly harvest its users’ personal data. After the bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden and negotiations with ByteDance dragged on, a ban seemed inevitable, even if his adversary Donald Trump won.
After all, MAGA had always been consistent about hating two things that happen to proliferate on TikTok: the Chinese Communist Party, whom they believed were secretly bankrolling the Bidens; and people who openly support Palestine. And in 2020, Trump signed an executive order attempting to ban TikTok, partially after seeing how TikTok was boosting support for his then-rival Joe Biden.
But months after the law officially kicked in, Trump sits in the Oval Office, TikTok remains online under Chinese ownership, and its fate hinges on whether the US and China can come to an …
Read the full story at The Verge.