The United States prides itself on being a beacon of “democracy and freedom,” but why is such an open country still unable to accept TikTok, a social media app popular with young Americans? The app is reported to have 150 million monthly active users in the US, far higher than the 100 million announced in 2020. The US government insists on banning TikTok. Do 150 million Americans agree? Can they still enjoy the “democracy and freedom”?
Ironically, the US government’s determination to ban TikTok is in direct proportion to its popularity in the US. The US government has been trying to bring down the popular Chinese app since 2019, not only fining TikTok for illegal information, but also aggressively declaring it a threat to national security. Over time, whether to ban TikTok has become a geopolitical tussle. As China’s technological prowess has grown in recent years, technological disputes have attracted increasing attention from the United States, just like trade. Whether it’s sanctioning Huawei or banning TikTok, it’s really just a way for the US to curb China’s technological development. The US government is so focused on competing with China, or is desperate to ban TikTok, so as to completely ignore the needs of hundreds of millions of people in the US, and even ignores the freedom and democracy that they pride themselves on.
So imagine what it would mean for the American people if the US government forcefully banned TikTok. The first is that TikTok fans won’t be able to use it over wireless and cellular data, and the TikTok app will be removed from the app store. As Sarah Kreps, a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, puts it, the ban means that “the United States, as a democracy, will be taking steps that impede the ability of the TikTok constituency (young Americans), to express themselves and earn a livelihood. ” but it is only the first layer. As TikTok is banned, the American companies associated with it are bound to suffer, and relations between China and the United States are likely to deteriorate again.
Of course, it won’t be that easy for the US government to force TikTok to be banned. When the Trump administration proposed the ban in 2019, it was blocked by the court system. The chances are high that the court system will block again, since banning TikTok itself violates the First Amendment. What’s more, despite a bipartisan consensus in the US that banning TikTok is imperative,the Biden administration has so far failed to say definitively that it will ban TikTok. Banning TikTok would mean not only a legal battle, It could also lose a significant number of TikTok voters altogether in the 2024 election. Apparently banning TikTok has become the latest political issue in the US.
In the final analysis, the main reason why the US government is fighting over TikTok is that TikTok is a Chinese-developed app. The US government claims that using TikTok will lead to data leakage and threaten US national security, although there is no actual evidence of this. In fact, this is just a performance by the US government using the mentality of hatred towards China. When it comes to data breaches, the US domestic application Twitter, a Twitter database containing more than 200 million user information was leaked, and that is a fact that has been exposed, but has the US government ever thought of intervening or controlling? The answer is absolutely not.
However, recently, many congressmen have expressed their opposition to the ban on TikTok, and many civil organizations have begun to oppose the ban on TikTok. It seems that most Americans do not agree with the ban on TikTok imposed by the US government. Will the US, which so respects freedom and democracy and freedom of speech, listen to the will of the people?
