Sen. Ashley Hinson’s “That Midwestern Mom,” a Facebook Adverse Consumer Product, and the U.S. Ban of TikTok
Last week, many users of TikTok received a notice warning them that Congress was planning to ban the service, and urged them to call their representatives. According to a report, Congressional offices were flooded with calls. This move may have backfired, demonstrating to several members of Congress the power the app had to shape users’ behavior. In her statement in support of the bill, Republican representative Ashley Hinson asked, “What if TikTok sent out an alert saying that elections were canceled?”
The content creator known as “That Midwestern Mom”, who has been in the industry for over 40 years, went global two years ago when she uploaded her quirky Minnesota “salad” concoctions on TikTok. The ingredients — Snickers bars, apples, Jell-O and Cool Whip — made her a viral sensation.
Other TikTokers use their platform to give back. William “Izzy” White is a drug dealer and ex-felon who used to live in Baltimore. He said he uses his platform to help homeless people in his community.
The bill has bipartisan support and threatens to ban TikTok if the parent company, Byte Dance, isn’t able to remove the app from China within six months.
TikTok has maintained that it now uses a separate, U.S.-based entity from ByteDance to store its American user data, but the reassurance hasn’t been enough to convince many of the platform’s skeptics.
The House Select Committee on China voted to remove a foreign-owned social media app from the Internet, but the U.S. doesn’t censor it
The bipartisan measure was unanimously approved last week by the House Energy and Commerce committee. Under the process that requires two-thirds of the House to approve, it will be on the floor Wednesday.
The bill was introduced to the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party by the congressman, but it was not intended to be used against American social media companies. He added that “it takes no position at all on the content of speech, only foreign adversary control.”
Members of Congress raised concerns with the app’s security in speeches leading up to the vote, including the potential for Chinese employees to gain access to American user data.
Gallagher says the lobbying campaign that TikTok launched — with push notices using location information to connect users by phone to their member of Congress — proves why the bill is needed.
The member offices were besieged by calls, with kids crying and one threatening suicide, and one pretending to be one of their fathers. “That, to me demonstrates how the platform could be weaponized in the future.”
The bill also sets up a process for the president to address any future threats from any foreign owned apps if they are deemed a national security risk. It also creates a system for users to download their own data and switch to an alternate platform.
The ranking Democrat on the House Select committee on China helped write the bill, and he is from Illinois. He told NPR that there is no right to harm our national security in the first amendment.
The company stresses that it has invested its own money to set up a firewall in an effort dubbed “Project Texas” to address data privacy concerns and keep users’ data in the U.S.
Donald Trump is not a Facebook nut: How social media can make Facebook bigger, or why the US economy is worse than it was in 1930
When Donald Trump was in the White House he proposed a ban on travelers from certain countries. But he does not support the House bill.
He promised as president to ban the social media app. Trump explained his new opposition in an interview with CNBC on Monday, saying that despite his the possible security risk, he opposed a ban because it meant users would move to another platform that he considered more dangerous.
There’s good and there’s bad with TikTok. Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I feel like Facebook is an enemy to the people and the media.
There are lots of videos complaining about the US economy on TikTok. One popular group of posts uses the term “Silent Depression.” The posts falsely suggest that the country is in worse shape today than it was in 1930. The posts were reported on by my colleagues, Jeanna Smialek and Jim Tankersley.
The RESTRICT Act of November 1923: An Open Question for the Free Speech of the Chinese Government and the Wall Staggering After the Hamas Attack
A Wall Street Journal analysis found that after the Hamas terrorist attack in October, TikTok flooded users with videos with extreme positions from both sides of the conflict. “Many stoked fear,” The Journal reported. In November, videos praising an old Osama bin Laden letter also went viral.
In December, a Rutgers University research group concluded that videos about topics the Chinese government dislikes — including Tibet, Uyghurs, Hong Kong protests and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown — were strangely hard to find on TikTok. All were more prominent on the photo-sharing site. “It’s not believable that this could happen organically,” a Rutgers expert told my colleague Sapna Maheshwari.
Several supporters emphasized that the bill is not an all-out ban, but instead an incentive to force divestment so TikTok can separate its ties to China.
But opponents of the bill on both sides of the aisle echoed each others’ concerns. The bill will be an ineffective solution to national security concerns and it will impose unacceptable limitations on free speech, according to opponents.
“It’s dangerous to give the president that kind of power, to give him the power to decide what Americans can see on their phones and on their computers,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).
Some Democrats were not in favor of an all-out ban. And despite the early push from a group of powerful lawmakers, the RESTRICT Act ultimately fizzled out amid a strong lobbying campaign by TikTok and Republican concerns about granting too much executive branch power over the private sector.
The bill could be used to force the sale of platforms like X, which is owned by Musk, according to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Chinese influence operations are not limited to TikTok, noted Representative Kamlager-Dove. In November 2023, Meta announced that it had removed a massive Chinese influence operation from its platforms that had targeted the US. Some smaller networks had also targeted users in India and Tibet.
Palermino sees TikTok Shop as a valuable tool for small businesses and says shuttering TikTok would have a negative short-term effect on Dieux. “Losing that would be challenging,” she says. While she’s confident Dieux could pivot to focus on other platforms, she suspects a TikTok ban could seriously impact other independent and up-and-coming brands within the United States in a big way. It will cause harm to their business.
Sigourney Norman, a former lawyer and artist who uses TikTok to talk about politics, race, gender and sexuality, says she doesn’t think that the bill will help protect American users.