Photo courtesy of Nik on Unsplash

With over 1 billion active users worldwide, the world’s most-used app is in serious jeopardy of being taken away from millions of Americans. The discourse over banning TikTok has been ongoing ever since the Trump administration took notice. The former president ordered the Chinese-owned app to be sold to an American-owned company or take the risk of banning TikTok transactions. The concern amongst the government centered around TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which was rumored to be taking United States users’ data and reporting it back to Chinese operations. 

There are many reasons why banning the platform is unnecessary in today’s climate, especially when issues such as gun control, abortion and mental health aren’t being properly addressed. Banning TikTok isn’t the best course of action, due to the hypocrisy being spurted out by Republican politicians and even Democrats who have reversed their stances from wanting the platform to stick around to now wanting it to be removed entirely.

Americans hear talk all the time about how certain issues may impact our First Amendment rights. Well, isn’t this an example of the government acting against millions of Americans’ freedom of speech? TikTok is an avenue for people to communicate with one another, build their platforms up and even support their families or communities.The hypocrisy doesn’t end there.

In 2021, an article from The Washington Post highlighted just how big of a problem Facebook has become, writing, “Facebook has become too big to escape. We’re rightly becoming more skeptical of Big Tech monopolies, and that should include the sheer volume of data they collect.”

Facebook provides its business partners with tracking software they embed in apps, websites and loyalty programs, and all of that combined is a danger to users of the app and even non-users of Facebook. It doesn’t end there, as Facebook does what TikTok has been accused of doing – taking data and matching it up with your account so that the user gets the most personalized version of the app possible. 

After searching for something in a browser you often just happen to see Facebook advertisements hyping up those very same searches; that’s an issue and downright creepy. Don’t forget that Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, testified in front of Congress in 2018 about data sharing concerns and Facebook’s potential involvement in the 2016 presidential election. And here we are, with no discussion being had about whether Facebook should be banned in the United States. Hypocrisy runs wild in the government. 

The idea of banning TikTok also highlights whether this is even being done because of the government’s “concerns” about the app or if there is an alternate reason. TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew faced questioning from congressional lawmakers earlier this month, and to say the hearing was laughable would be an understatement. 

Not only did the line of questioning not make sense, as most of the lawmakers are above 50 years old and don’t understand how the internet works, but the hearing also was filled with xenophobic remarks. The relationship between China and the United States has long been filled with accusations and hatred for years now, with tensions primarily heating up during the Trump administration.

Chew was called a “weapon of the Chinese Communist Party” and “the spy in Americans’ pockets.” Not only that, but lawmakers continued to get the CEO’s name wrong as well as assume his nationality to be Chinese, despite Chew being Singaporean.

POLITCO’s Rebecca Kern agreed with the claims of xenophobic remarks, saying, “They brought him in to yell at him and show they’re strong on China.”

The banning of TikTok is simply a ploy to get back at China. And whilst there is justification in investigating TikTok – simply due to the questionable nature of every single social media platform – we must notice the cloudy judgements being made by our politicians. 

Despite TikTok implementing technical and organizational barriers that will keep U.S. data safe from unauthorized access, the app is in contention of being wiped out of America. Not only does the banning of TikTok have support from the Biden administration, but bans have already gone underway with at least 32 states enacting restrictions on state government agencies, employees and contractors using the app on government-issued devices.