Congress is right to want to curtail TikTok’s power and influence
Imagine a world where America’s foreign adversaries don’t need spies or hackers to infiltrate our society or meddle with our democracy. Instead, they can deploy a far more insidious tool: a digital platform, addictive by design, that captivates its users and then mobilizes them to influence our democratic institutions.
The scenario may sound farfetched, but something like that recently happened. Earlier this month, while the US Congress was considering a bill that would curtail TikTok’s operations in the United States, the popular, Chinese-owned social media platform confronted its users with a kind of digital ransom note calling for political action. As the New York Times reported, TikTok’s campaign sparked a deluge of calls to Capitol Hill, overwhelming some congressional offices and demonstrating the platform’s political influence.
TikTok, whose parent company is the Beijing-based ByteDance, is alarmingly addictive and has a young and intensely loyal user base. It’s so addictive, in fact, that the Chinese version of the app, Douyin, limits Chinese users under the age of 14 to 40 minutes of usage a day, and only between the hours of 6am and 10pm. TikTok introduced a similar measure in the US last year, restricting users under 18 to a default limit of 60 minutes a day, though the feature is optional; certain highusage users are asked to accept a limit, according to ABC News, but are allowed to decide their own maximum.
TikTok’s recommender algorithm, which barrages users with an endless feed of viral, short-form video clips, has effectively exploited human psychology to ensnare a generation of users. Research, including studies funded by China’s own National Natural Science Foundation, have shown that the app undermines human selfcontrol and encourages compulsive consumption. Its algorithms. which automatically curate content to users’ tastes and preferences, have perfected what many other companies have tried: fostering addiction through a feedback loop that continually refines content suggestions based on user interactions and profiling.
Researchers have suggested that excessive TikTok usage among young people correlates to mental health problems and poor academic performance that further drives depression. With nearly one in five teens reporting that they’re on YouTube or TikTok “almost constantly”, the draw to the platform seems less like a choice and more like a compulsion.
The FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent testimony to the Senate intelligence committee also underscored the national security risks posed by the Chinese government’s control of software on millions of American devices. Those risks, as well as TikTok’s generally addictive nature, are part of what led to growing momentum for a US legislative response.
On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would compel ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a US company or face a ban on distribution through major platforms and app stores. President Joe Biden has expressed support for the bill, which enjoys strong bipartisan backing, and indicated he is ready to sign it into law after it is passed by the Senate.
By contrast, Donald Trump, whose administration sought to ban TikTok due to the risk of Chinese government surveillance, has reversed his stance in what seems like a strategically motivated pivot to court younger voters and perhaps China. Trump’s opposition to the bill should raise an alarm bell about the risks of TikTok being weaponized in the forthcoming election.
Don’t underestimate the platform’s influence: with one-third of American adults under 30 regularly scrolling TikTok for news, and the app serving as the predominant source of information for generation Z, the platform could well influence the presidential election this fall and other US elections to come.
While Congress’s bill aims to address immediate security concerns by compelling ByteDance’s divestiture, it falls short of addressing TikTok’s broader risks to US democracy. If the bill takes effect, the app would still probably remain on many of the 170m US devices that have already downloaded it, exposing its users to digital manipulation and foreign data aggregation and influence. The app’s gradual dysfunction when it can no longer be updated might render it slow, glitchy and eventually unusable, but this may not happen before the November elections.
Beyond a single app, this saga demands a broader conversation about safeguarding democracy in the digital age. The European Union’s newly enacted AI act provides a blueprint for a more holistic approach, using an evidence- and risk-based system that could be used to classify platforms like TikTok as high-risk AI systems subject to more stringent regulatory oversight, with measures that demand transparency, accountability and defensive measures against misuse.
As the bill heads to the Senate, it will almost certainly face an onslaught of legal and lobbying efforts. Critics will also probably argue that the threats TikTok poses are overblown or that the
US Congress is merely engaged in antiChina political posturing. That’s untrue. If anything, this is an opportunity for Congress to refine its approach to social media and other powerful technology platforms and adopt a nuanced, riskbased framework that would balance the creative freedoms of content creators with the imperative to shield the public from foreign manipulation.
This – the TikTok dilemma – calls for a decisive, comprehensive strategy to fortify the pillars of our democracy and protect Americans’ cognitive liberty – the individual and collective right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. We can and should chart a course toward a future where technology is better aligned with the greater good.
Nita Farahany is the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology and the Robinson O Everett professor of law and philosophy at Duke University
injured; I remember fearing for my life. I see the bullets and the smoke.
On that day five years ago, I was shot nine times with a semiautomatic gun. I would like the prime minister to put himself in my shoes, to imagine this happening to him or his wife. Maybe he thinks it is in the past now and he doesn’t have to be stuck with our suffering any more.
I know that politicians only propose law changes if they think the public will support them. It feels like something has gone wrong in this country if that is true after only five years. Since the attacks, New Zealand has been too nervous to have some difficult conversations that could help to increase awareness of the problems we face and how to solve them. There should be public forums to talk about online extremism and racism in the street, how it happens and how to prevent it. We need to talk more.
There are still questions remaining about what happened that day. Even some of the conclusions reached by the official inquiry – that the terrorist was a lone wolf and didn’t tell anyone what he planned to do – have been cast into doubt by new research this year that found online postings he made which had never come to light before. That needs more investigation.
There is also much to do if we want to prevent such an atrocity from happening again. When she was prime minister, Jacinda Ardern understood our pain and she was honest with us, but I was disappointed in her Labour government too. They dragged their feet. In four and a half years before they were voted out, they didn’t strengthen laws against hate speech or regulate social media. They didn’t resolve the matter of reparations for those affected.
The royal commission of inquiry into the attacks made 44 recommendations and the government said it had started work on or had completed all of them. But I struggle to name one change that makes me feel safer since the attack, apart from the gun law reforms. The same issues carry on and on; no one accepts accountability. It feels like our leaders don’t care about us any more. I think they try to make us frustrated and tired so we give up.
Every three months, I must seek a fresh medical certificate to prove I am still unable to work due to PTSD so that I qualify for income support under New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme. It is like they believe that in three months I might be OK and ready to go back to work. I am a strong person but this will be with me all my life.
For a long time, I remembered holding someone’s hand under a pile of bodies as the attack went on. I could not see the man whose hand I was squeezing and didn’t know if he had lived or died. That was difficult. A few months ago, four and a half years after the attack, I finally learned his identity. The man whose hand I was holding was shot and survived, like me. All these years he had wondered who I was too. When I met him, we said to each other, “It was you. You were holding my hand.”
I want people to know that they cannot expect us to be normal again. We are still very tender about it. We are still very raw. This is different to other pain – to the end of a relationship or physical hurt. I still can’t handle what I witnessed. It will never go away.
Five years from now, I hope I don’t have to worry about being safe. I never used to feel unsafe in New Zealand before; now I don’t leave the house unless I have to. But I keep going. When I play walking football, when I see my football friends, the noise in my brain stops and for an hour I don’t feel fear any more.
I believe the reason I survived is because Allah has things left for me to do on this earth. And I do still believe in this country. We can confront our prejudices and change; understand each other better. In a recent list, New Zealand was ranked the fourth safest country in the world. I think we should aspire to be the safest.