Is the White House being hypocritical about TikTok?

Credit: Mashable Composite; Chip Somodevilla / General_4530 / Moment / Douglas Rissing / iStock / Getty.

On April 24, President Joe Biden signed a bill that started the clock on TikTok’s future in the America: unless TikTok’s parent company ByteDance divests from the app within the next year, it will face a ban in the country.

In the days following this decision, the official Biden-Harris TikTok account has posted 10 videos on the app. That’s because the president plans to continue using TikTok until the new law is invoked. His campaign joined TikTok in February.

Biden, vying for reelection this year, is harnessing the power of TikTok to reach young voters. The app has a whopping 170 million users in America, and over 60 percent of American teens say they use TikTok. The reach of TikTok appears too valuable for the campaign to forgo, despite the Biden administration touting concerns over national security, propaganda, and the app’s China-based owner having access to U.S. user data.

Mixed messagesWhile it may not be so simple, the current administration seems to be sending mixed messages about TikTok. Not only is Biden continuing to use the platform, the campaign has been courting TikTok influencers to post pro-Biden content for months. Since September, prominent TikTokkers with millions of followers have been invited to visit the White House, according to an investigation by The Intercept.

Not only is Biden continuing to use TikTok, the campaign has been courting TikTok influencers to post pro-Biden content for months.

Back in March, a Democratic congressman was similarly called out for his use of TikTok, despite his voting in favor of banning the app. Rep. Jeff Jackson, a congressman from North Carolina who has over 2.2 million followers on TikTok, frequently posts videos to speak about subjects like the war in Ukraine, artificial intelligence, and his own campaigning efforts. Jackson has lauded the educational value of TikTok, but also explained his viewpoint on the app and its potential ban, saying in a video posted to X that the Chinese government’s influence over the algorithm is his biggest area of concern.

“The best-case scenario for TikTok is that it continues to operate but is no longer owned — and potentially controlled — by an adversarial country,” he wrote.

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Democratic party members, including Jackson, have repeatedly stated that their qualms are not with TikTok itself, but who owns it.

“We’ve been clear: we do not want to ban apps like TikTok,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said in a statement last week. “What we want — and what the legislation we support would do — is ensure that TikTok becomes owned by an American company so that our and our children’s sensitive personal data stays here instead of going to China and so that Americans’ understandings and views can’t be manipulated by algorithms potentially controlled by the [People’s Republic of China].”

Rob Flaherty, deputy manager of Biden’s reelection campaign, defended the administration’s continued use of TikTok. “We would be silly to write off any place where people are getting information about the president.”

And yet, the campaign’s continued use of TikTok and admittance of the app’s role in the lives of young people presents a conundrum.

Dr. Jessica Maddox, a professor of digital media technology at the University of Alabama, tells Mashable that the Biden administration’s presence on TikTok sends a confounding message.

“It is one hundred percent hypocritical for President Biden and his re-election campaign to still hold TikTok accounts,” she says. “This makes me skeptical – if this app was really such a national security threat, why would entities so close to the president being using it? It doesn’t make sense, and it makes President Biden lose the optics game of this legislation.”

Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has also sent mixed messages when it comes to his stance on TikTok. The former president attempted to ban in the app in 2020, also citing concerns over ties to China and censorship of content deemed “politically sensitive” by the Chinese Communist Party. More recently, however, Trump condemned the looming ban on Truth Social, blaming Biden for trying to “help his friends over at Facebook become richer”, and accusing the current president of “election interference” (a favoured and false claim Trump has repeatedly made in different variations since the 2020 election).

“Just so everyone knows,” Trump wrote in a post his social media platform, “especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.”

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Meanwhile, Republicans have been largely in favor of banning TikTok, too, including party members like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy. The TikTok bill passed, after all, in a rare bipartisan vote, and other prominent prominent Republicans, including Ramaswamy and former vice president Mike Pence, have branded TikTok as “digital fentanyl”.

The fear of TikTokThe conceivable irony of the situation is not lost on TikTok users. Comments on recent videos on the president’s account are pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation. “I’m confused,” wrote one user in a comment. “Why does Biden have a TikTok but wants it banned”. Another asked, “If this app is so bad, why are you using it to campaign?”

Those in the pro-TikTok camp have additionally raised concerns that TikTok’s algorithms and data gathering are not much different than the likes of other reigning social media sites. Meta-owned platform Facebook, in particular, has presented similar issues to that of TikTok, namely election misinformation.

“The reason they’re not willing to look the other way with TikTok actually has very little to do with TikTok itself…”

Maddox tells Mashable that she believes the the moral panic around TikTok is far more targeted than the criticism directed at similar social platforms.

“As we saw with Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2016, U.S. politicians are more than willing to look the other way when data is misused for political purposes,” Maddox says. “The reason they’re not willing to look the other way with TikTok actually has very little to do with TikTok itself — this is about bigger geopolitical relations and tensions with China, as well as the U.S. and China battling it out as to who can claim ownership of privatized social media.”

Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, says while he doesn’t necessarily believe the U.S. government using TikTok ahead of a ban is hypocritical, the app is an easy target for politicians, calling it a “wildly successful and rapidly growing social platform with ties to a Chinese company.”

“Rather than work on comprehensive privacy rights, regulation of social platforms associated with misinformation, it’s easier to point a finger at a suspect and force a condition — sell to us interests or get banned,” Lightman tells Mashable. “If any nation state would like to get data on U.S. citizens it could relatively easily and if they want to develop AI bots to disseminate false information based on that data collection, they could do that fairly easily, as well.”

Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images.

Lawmakers have sounded the alarms themselves. “TikTok poses a serious risk to the privacy and mental health of our young people,” Democratic Senator Edward Markey said on the Senate floor last week. “But that problem isn’t unique to TikTok and certainly doesn’t justify a TikTok ban. American companies are doing the same thing, too.”

In tandem with Democratic officials having a presence on TikTok, other questions have arisen. Arguments against the platform have been labelled “vague” with a “lack of context”. Congress has also been accused of silencing criticism of Israel on TikTok, amid the war on Gaza. This comes as lawmakers, celebrities, and creators accused TikTok of pushing “pro-Palestine” content.

What’s at stake?As America gears up for elections coming this November, young people appear to be disappointed at the new law. While public opinion is largely divided — almost half of American adults say they would support a ban, but a third of Americans disagree that the app poses a security threat, according to YouGov data — many voters have taken to social media to delineate the hypocrisy of the law.

TikTokkers have pointed out that progressive politics have found space on TikTok in a different way to other social media platforms, and the Biden administration now risks alienating young voters. Young voters see the ban as a political concern, but also a personal one. Those voting this year have expressed their disillusionment and condemned the timing of the whole thing.

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It makes sense that government officials and campaigns turn to a place like TikTok to practice their political prowess and get young people listening. TikTok has grown to become a major source for news, especially functioning as a search engine and alternative to traditional media for Gen Z users. It’s also a place for movements to gain momentum.

“A fragmented media environment requires us to show up and meet voters where they are – and that includes online. TikTok is one of many places we’re making sure our content is being seen by voters,” an unnamed Biden official told Reuters following the ban.

But ultimately, regardless of the outcome, the optics are dicey for users, creators, and young Americans who use TikTok in their everyday lives.

But by posting on TikTok to garner votes, while also purporting the dangers of TikTok, the government’s approach has been arguably frustrating to witness: the overall messaging has become blurred, which is where the problem lies.

“To date, we’ve only been presented with hypothetical scenarios as to why TikTok could potentially be a threat to national security,” says Maddox. “With only a hypothetical explanation, young voters don’t understand. This is emblematic of U.S. politicians not understanding social media, which we see every time tech CEOs testify on the Hill.”

“The United States is absolutely risking alienating young voters with this law,” she says.

The truth is, TikTok is a fruitful landscape for conversation and culture, and young people in particular have taken advantage of this since it launched in 2016. Although the app, like its peers, has its fair share of problems, it is also an ecosystem for education, community, and connection. It can’t be proven that the government fears TikTok as a tool of communication for these movements, but it is clear that many aren’t on board with why the platform’s future is now hanging in the balance. And the gap between lawmakers and the public is abundantly clear, too.

TikTok may not be going anywhere — and if an approved U.S. buyer is found, or TikTok wins its fight, the app will remain in user’s hands. But ultimately, regardless of the outcome, the optics are dicey for users, creators, and young Americans who use TikTok in their everyday lives.

Meera is a Culture Reporter at Mashable, joining the UK team in 2021. She writes about digital culture, mental health, big tech, entertainment, and more. Her work has also been published in The New York Times, Vice, Vogue India, and others.

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