Nancy Qian

Opinion | How TikTok’s arrogance sealed its fate in America

Instead of tackling data fears and becoming a force for good in the tech industry, TikTok mobilised its users against the government, raising alarm at how easily a foreign-owned entity can exert political influence

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew listens during his testifmony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms” on Capitol Hill, US, on March 23, 2023. Photo: AFP

Nancy Qian

Published: 6:30pm, 7 May 2024Updated: 7:27pm, 7 May 2024

TikTok is one of the biggest stories in business and geopolitics. US President Joe Biden has just signed a law that will ban the massively popular app in nine months if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell it to a non-Chinese entity.

TikTok, for its part, has called the law “political theatre”, and it is probably right: there is always some theatrics in politics, and bashing China is one of the most popular shows in town. Almost no other issue can unite the two major parties.

But, given the arrogance TikTok exhibited in the weeks and months leading up to the bill’s passage, the company’s leadership clearly has a fundamental misunderstanding of America and Americans.

Compared to policymakers in other countries, US lawmakers are usually reluctant to regulate business, and many had previously opposed a forced sale of TikTok for fear of creating a perception of corruption, reducing business and investor confidence, and undermining free speech. Most agree that any regulation should clear the relatively high bar of serving the public interest.

Until a month ago, the main public interest concern was data privacy. Questions such as who can access user data, and whether that data can be put to malignant uses, are pertinent to all large social media platforms. Over the past decade, Congress has held many hearings on the issue, often targeting large US companies such as Meta and Google.

But these concerns are amplified in TikTok’s case, because many US lawmakers assume the Chinese government can force TikTok to hand over its American users’ data. Under laws China enacted in 2017 and 2021, all Chinese organisations are required to help the government’s intelligence gathering and counter-espionage work, if asked.