TikTok Users Are Finally Talking About the Ban
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
For months now, politicians have been ramping up talk on a TikTok ban. On the state level, they’ve had success with over 20 states banning them from government-owned devices, as well as at universities. Up until recently, however, these federal calls to ban TikTok were just a way to stir up the press that had little staying power.
In December, Senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill explicitly targeting TikTok. A month later, Senator Josh Hawley introduced similar legislation. Last week, Senator Mark Warner joined the club. His bill would grant the Secretary of Commerce power to ban TikTok instead of the President, as Rubio and Hawley’s bills dictate.
That said, the bills are practically clones, with only minute details differentiating each one. But Warner’s, which was introduced Tuesday, has gained a bit of traction, in large part because the White House has endorsed it. Warner’s bill would essentially allow the Secretary of Commerce to restrict technology from six countries that pose a risk to America.
But despite all of this legislative energy focused on banning TikTok creators had largely ignored calls to ban the platform until now.
“I’m too chronically online to survive the ban,” one user captioned their video, which posited that the recent legislation might actually be the end of TikTok.
Some have taken to explaining the differences between different bills. Others are more dramatic, with one user making a video with screenshots of the various bills paired with the caption “thank you for all the amazing memories.” Some people are sharing information for their Instagram accounts in the hopes their followers will join them on another platform. And of course, there’s plenty of misinformation being spread—one user claimed that the app will be banned on March 15.
So what are they saying?
Some are pointing to the way other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, also have questionable data collection practices, though analysts currently believe they are safe from legislative scrutiny even as TikTok is under fire. Others believe that reports of TikTok’s data collection actually point to the company trying to test the efficiency of its efforts to stop user data from being accessed by China—though there is no evidence supporting this idea.
Many creators are asking their followers to contact their senators and express their opinions To that end, per reporting from The Information, TikTok has invited creators to visit Washington D.C. to share with lawmakers how the app has positively impacted their lives.
Of course, this isn’t the first time creators have panicked over TikTok’s future. Back in 2020, when President Trump was considering a ban, users quickly shared their other accounts and made tearful goodbyes. But the last ban went nowhere, leaving creators to view any call to ban TikTok as toothless.
But, the landscape has changed quite a bit since then, with new reports detailing how its parent company ByteDance has tracked journalists and accessed American users’ data. In fact, a federal TikTok ban is currently one of the few issues to garner bipartisan support—a far cry from 2020 when Trump’s proposed ban was considered a partisan talking point. And TikTok’s measures to prove that it poses no threat, like its data-protection program Project Texas, have failed to fully sway lawmakers.
Even still, talks of a ban haven’t entirely upended the For You Page yet. But more and more users are discussing it, which can’t be said for many of the previous attempts to ban the app. If TikTok wants to stay alive it will have to prove that Americans support the app. And not just its major stars.
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Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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