March 18 (UPI) — TikTok users who rely on the video platform to showcase their art, promote their brand, connect with other people and even earn a living are asking Congress to find another way to address data security issues.
“Hey, United States government, can I ask what our priorities are right now?” TikTok user “notsophiesilva” said in a clip to her 500,000 followers outlining more important issues for Congress to tackle, including gun reform, climate change and homelessness.
Citing concerns about privacy and national security, the U.S. House on Wednesday passed a bill to force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app or be banned in the United States, where it has about 150 million users. It heads to the Senate next. President Joe Biden supports it.
TikTok, which offers an e-commerce platform, argues a U.S. ban would damage millions of businesses and “destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
The company released a report Wednesday saying the platform contributed $23 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, generating advertising of nearly $15 billion. Almost 40% of the 5 million small businesses who use the platform “say TikTok is critical to their existence” with 224,000 jobs being supported and a total of $5.3 billion in taxes contributed in 2023 to the federal government.
As Congress debated the bill last week, TikTok content creators spoke outside the U.S. Capitol, decrying the impact it would have on small businesses.
North Carolina-based content creator Jensen Savannah she relies on TikTok and her 400,000 followers for her full-time work offering tips on things to do in the Carolinas. She believes she would lose up to 50% of her income if the platform is banned.
“Content creators are content creators,” Savannah told WISTV. “If there is a passion there, then they are going to continue to find a way. But I hope that Congress can find a creative way to cease the security threats because I understand that those security threats are there.”
Lawmakers are concerned about the Chinese government’s access to the troves of data that TikTok harvests from its American users. TikTok CEO Shou Chew told Congress last year that user data is not shared with the Chinese government, but some past data from American users was still on servers that ByteDance could access.
Kerry Ingraham, 27, who earns money producing style and beauty videos on TikTok, said lawmakers should find a way to protect data without banning the app.
“There could be other ways to compromise, making better choices, to protect user data without having to completely ban users from the app,” she said.
The American Civil Liberties Union is among critics raising First Amendment concerns about restricting the app.
Jenna Leventoff, the ACLU’s senior policy counsel, called the bill “unconstitutional and reckless.”
“It’s blatant censorship,” she said.
Kahlil Greene, whose “Gen Z Historian” account has over 600,000 TikTok followers, said lawmakers have failed to demonstrate the risk, especially compared to other social media apps.
“It’s a necessary thing for us to push for and demand at least greater transparency and justification for these sorts of decisions and to call out the hypocrisy of American undemocratic actions as well,” Green said.
Lawmakers were also inundated with calls from TikTok users — many of them children, calling without their parents’ permission.
“Some of them called and basically said, ‘what is a congressman?'” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., one of the bill’s sponsors, told Fox 32 News in Chicago, indicating how TikTok had the potential to cause “chaos” if weaponized by China.
According to Common Sense Media, certain parts of TikTok are available for users under age 13. A 12-year-old user told WUSA9 that TikTok “is a place where people can express free speech,” adding that he spends seven hours a day on it.
Some users said a TikTok ban would just send them to another app, like SnapChat or Meta’s Facebook, with its “Reels” video feature, or Instagram.
