Taken from UCI Her Campus
By: Hannah Williams
I cannot believe me, along with a lot of the US population, are mourning an app. It seems silly and I am sure older generations are praising this Tik Tok ban and saying it's good for our generation to get back outside, but they wouldn’t get it. This was the one place where many could be themselves. For me, this was a spur of the moment quarantine download and soon became one of my main platforms for travel and trauma dumping content. I found communities online that I never would have found on Instagram. I have friends from all over the world I met through here. I’ve seen myself grow and change through these silly stupid videos. This is also the place where I, as well as many others, didn’t feel the harsh censorship of other apps.
Tiktok’s algorithm is, in my opinion, unmatched. Any other app, and I am looking at you Instagram Reels, will never compare. It’s so much faster and filters content at triple the speed. There is a reason why people bag on reel users for bening three months late to every trend.
As of right now Tiktok will be banned January 19, 2025 in the United States. There’s a lot of decisions being made and it may possibly be postponed, but it’s best to assume the worst. There’s petitions all across the internet to stop the ban and many senators like MA Sen. Ed Markey officially introduced the legislation to delay a nationwide ban on TikTok.
Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of Bytedance (TikTok), used to be an intern at Facebook before becoming Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest competitor. Meta even tried to launch their own competitor to TikTok called Lasso in 2018, but it never caught on. It was shut down in 2020. Facebook even paid a GOP firm to malign Tik Tok back in 2022 to cause a slander campaign and raise safety concerns. META wants to be Tiktok so badly that their latest update on instagram was to make it look more like tik tok longform instead of squares.
Chew attended several congressional hearings in 2023 about the ban. He defended Tik Tok against accusations that it is a national security threat. Chew was repeatedly questioned about his nationality and possible affiliations to the Chinese Communist party by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark, even after repeating himself several times that he was Singaporian. This clip went viral and many found it racist and a scapegoat by the US Government.
Seeing the hypocrisy, Chew made a connection at facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal and stated that Tiktok didn’t collect more data than American social-media platforms. “I don’t think ownership is the issue here,” he explained during the hearing. “American social companies don’t have a good track record with data privacy and user security.”
This just seems like an odd cop-out for the government to claim rather than the real issue: this is a media they cannot control.
Historically known, by this day and age most of our US media outlets are bought by billionaires. The same goes for social media platforms and are therefore targeted. Tiktok is not under the same jurisdiction and they fear that. Instagram and facebook take my information everyday asking me for “allow them to see my precise location” when I sign on every week. Tiktok has not asked me that once.
Tiktok has over 150 million users in America and therefore getting too big for the government officials to ignore. It was all fun and games when it was musically but now its “too powerful” and must be stopped.
People are speculating online, but really it’s no surprise, that the real reason the government doesn’t want the American people on this app is that it’s built such a large community and easier for us to band together. The rich control most of the media outlets in this country and put out selective content but tiktok does not.
I’ve seen this banding together first hand during quarantine. In 2020, former President Trump’s campaign promised huge crowds at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma but failed to do so. Partly the reason for this was that tiktok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for his rally as a prank. I remember seeing this all across my “for you page.”
In a more recent example, with the Palisade fires going on up in Los Angeles, for the first week I only saw the fact that Mexico was sending up firefighters to help out on Tiktok. I feel the only reason it got to Corporate media sources the following week was because it built so much traction of “you don’t see this on the news” videos circling around.
Another reason why this band doesn’t make sense is how good it was for the American economy and small businesses. Tiktok drove $14.7 billion in small-business owners’ revenue in 2023 and contributed to $24.2 billion in U.S. gross domestic product last year. Tiktok supported a minimum of 224,000 jobs in the United States, with the app's greatest economic impact seen in California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.
Small businesses will be impacted greatly with this band. Chloe Joy Sexton (@Chloebluffcakes on tiktok) was a plaintiff at the supreme court case earlier in January.
“In 2020 I was fired from my job after telling my employer that I was pregnant. I was also struggling to care for my mother who I eventually lost to brain cancer. I then began raising my 7 year old sister. I started creating tik tok videos to financially support my family and as a creative outlet where I discussed everything from parenting and grief to my love of baking. My videos went viral and allowed me to jumpstart my business Chloe’s Giant Cookies. I have now shipped thousands of cookies all over the world and even published a cookbook. As a small business with almost no capital I rely almost entirely on tiktok to market my products. No other platform can replace it. I have tried posting the same exact content on other social media apps without anywhere near the same success”.
Now, with word circulating on Tiktok of the ban many are frustrated, but in the great American people way they make it funny. Rednote, which many are describing as the Chinese version of Tiktok, has hit the app stores as the #1 most downloaded app during the Supreme Court’s decision this week. Because the US Government claims that they want to ban Tiktok for not giving personal information to China, thousands of Americans willingly signed up for this app out of spite.
Americans are so unserious yet it is so impactful.. It's like kids defying their parents (Americans and their government). “You want to take away our app so bad FINE” and then go to the china version of tiktok. People are SWARMING that app not just from america but all over the world it's becoming a huge trend.
Some people from China asked “Is it true that Americans have to work two jobs to survive” with the “yes unfortunately” response . We’re being called ‘tik tok refugees’ and are given a funny warm welcome as we scroll. Americans are being asked by kids in China to help with their english homework and it's just honestly a good time. They want us to hate each other so bad. Their plan blew up in their face.
While some speculate the app will still work after the ban, it is unlikely. It makes it illegal for third-party companies to provide service to the app. Oracle hosts all the US user data from Tiktok and they’ll have to decide if they will keep it going or risk getting fined. (Spoiler alert: they did in fact shut it down completely from the app store).
On the anger side of things… in all seriousness this is kind of messed up to see. All of the above stuff is funny and it's cool to see Americans and alike come together. HOWEVER the United states government, who historically cannot agree on anything, agreed on banning an app before they ever did a single thing to help stop kids getting killed in their classrooms. National security risk? Yeah right.
Currently, I am just sitting back and watching it unfold. The Supreme Court is thinking over their decision and then the senate put in a bill to postpone it for 200 something days and also there's word the app will go completely dark on sunday. Whichever it is, that was the first app I saw where people around the world came together when it was needed. There was no unwarranted sensory unlike facebook and instagram. I hope it doesn't go away but if it does it will be missed.
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Update!
President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week to keep Tiktok operating for 75 days, even as national security questions persist.
On January 19, when users in the United States opened for a last day of scrolling this message was all that was shown: “Sorry, Tiktok isn’t available right now. A law banning Tiktok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use tiktok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate Tik Tok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
However, on January 21st Tiktok was back online with this message: “Welcome back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, Tiktok is back in the U.S.!”
Many american users posted about their confusion and called it “incredibly suspicious” that it was banned and brought back within a 24 hour time span with a credit to Trump right before he’s in office again. This whole thing feels like a publicity stunt to distract from other stuff he’s said and plans to do.
This timeline is SO odd. We have Trump as the ‘hero’ who could potentially save it, yet he was the one who wanted to ban Tiktok in the first place back in 2020?? It’s unpredictable and that seems to be the most consistent thing about this man.
Well… For now we have it back. It’s tik tok season two but came back with a lobotomy. It doesn’t feel the same after all this. What is next? We will have to wait and see. But everything that has happened over an app is insane but interesting to watch. The American people don’t like being played with that’s for sure.
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