“TikTok’s Pro-China Tilt” 24 April 2024

The debate over TikTok has shifted very quickly. Just a few months ago, it seemed unlikely that the U.S. government would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell it...Yet a bipartisan TikTok bill...is now on its way to becoming law. What explains the turnabout?

Parts of the debate over TikTok — about the overall benefits and drawbacks of social media, for instance — are complicated, and they would not justify the forced sale of a single company...But at least one problem with TikTok falls into a different category. It has become a leading source of information in this country...

American law has long restricted foreign ownership of television or radio stations, even by companies based in friendly countries...The same is true in other countries. India doesn’t allow Pakistan to own a leading Indian publication, and vice versa...

Posts related to subjects that the Chinese government wants to suppress — like Hong Kong protests and Tibet — are strangely missing from the platform, according to a recent report by two research groups. The same is true about sensitive subjects for Russia and Iran...A separate Wall Street Journal analysis, focused on the war in Gaza, found evidence that TikTok was promoting extreme content, especially against Israel...

Many members of Congress and national security experts find these details unnerving...In response, TikTok denies that China’s government influences its algorithm and has called the outside analyses of its content misleading...I find the company’s defense too vague to be persuasive. It doesn’t offer a logical explanation for the huge gaps by subject matter...Doing so would be easier if the company were more transparent...