The Debate Around a Bill to Ban TikTok, Explained

The RESTRICT Act has bipartisan support, but critics say it may not work as intended.

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Sens. Mark Warner and John Thune introduce the Restrict Act at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The growing consensus in Washington, D.C., is that the social media company TikTok—a subsidiary of the Chinese company ByteDance—is a national security threat. The app’s collection of American users’ data, its obligation under Chinese law to provide that data to the Chinese Communist Party, and its ability to disseminate CCP propaganda and suppress anti-CCP dissent through its algorithm are all widely cited concerns.

What’s dividing most political leaders now is what to do about TikTok. Seeking to avoid a repeat of the Trump administration’s ill-fated 2020 attempt at a ban of the app, the Biden administration wants Congress to act.

A plethora of bills to address the issue have been introduced, and more drafts may be en route. But one in particular has bipartisan support and an endorsement by the White House: the RESTRICT Act, introduced by Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune earlier this month. It now boasts 25 cosponsors in the Senate.

If TikTok were truly banned, it would eventually be removed from U.S. mobile app stores. In theory, some committed users might still be able to access it by way of virtual personal networks (VPNs), but even then, Apple and Google’s digital rights management (DRM) software could still block the app from running. Proponents of the RESTRICT Act, including Warner, have expressed confidence that content creators reliant on TikTok could migrate to other sites if the app disappeared.

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  1. BenP

    I would appreciate if someone from the pro-RESTRICT side could explain, precisely, what kind of information the CCP can get from ByteDance (or other Chinese tech companies) that it cannot get elsewhere and that threatens our national security.

    For instance, it's claimed that they can use information from ByteDance to "learn about our communications infrastructure". Can they not do this already? What kind of information about our communications infrastructure is ByteDance privy to that would otherwise be unavailable to the CCP, and in what manner would that information jeapordize our national security?

    I'm always skeptical when Republicans and Democrats get together to give the government new powers that are suppose to protect us from outside threats. This time is no different, especially with the threat itself being so vague. When it was Al-Qaeda we at least had realistic scenarios to consider.

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      Ben Connelly

      You should be able to find Klon Kitchen’s newsletter The Current in the Dispatch archives. He has a couple of articles on TikTok including one that I think is titled “Ban TikTok Now” in which he makes the case.

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    Eborah

    This is a start on what I asked for in a different thread. No offense to this analyst/reporter, but I'd appreciate a deeper dive by someone with more legal expertise and someone with a strong technology background (likely a team of at least two, rather than finding both in one person).

    The section that came under fire probably deserves to come under fire - that's a blank check. What's the oversight on this? How can the Commerce Secretary's decisions be challenged? Is there any allowance for legislative or judicial review, and what is it?

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    Raiderduck

    This bill would give the government way too much unchecked power. I wrote my Representative, two Senators and President Biden yesterday, asking them all to oppose it.

    Price: If you're reading this, you may want to check with a mobile OS expert. I'm pretty sure Android users could easily get around a ban by simply getting TikTok or any other banned app from a third-party app store (such as Baidu or APK Pure) or even downloading the app from a website (a process known as "sideloading"). The ban would likely not even work on the most popular smartphone platform.

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    1. James

      Yeah, Dispatch, PLEASE get someone technical to write about this. Not only is the claim about Google’s DRM flat out wrong, this article doesn’t even mention that the bill would require service providers to monitor what happens on their networks to ensure no violations of the ban occur. It applies to VPNs, but the bill is written so broadly that even explaining how to circumvent the block is banned. This bill could be used both to construct a domestic version of the GFW *and* end e2e encrypted communication in the US; it’s pretty alarming.

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    Rajeev

    Give broad power to the executive and in this case the Secretary of Commerce to prohibit transactions with foreign "adversaries" ... what could go wrong?

    We've seen many iterations of this type of broad approach before. It never works because you can't regulate everything. China is best served as being the country that uses technology to control its citizens. The US Congress/Executive can ban TikTok or other Apps from government devices. That's reasonable on a federal or state level but that's about where it should end. TikTok is probably bad for our children but that is ok. Trying to eliminate any potential adverse effects of technology on the populace is a dumb idea that has never worked.

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