TikTok Opponents, Activists Square Off Amid Efforts to Ban App Over Security Risks, CCP Ties

Kara Frederick, director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation (C) shares her opposition to TikTok on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2023. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)

WASHINGTON—Last week was big for TikTok on Capitol Hill—from the CEO testifying in a hearing that lasted for more than five hours to activists on both sides of the debate making their case regarding the United States banning the app.

There are 150 million Americans who use TikTok, according to the company, which is owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is connected to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Activists held a press conference on March 23 outside the Capitol, calling on Congress to ban the app, citing issues such as detriments to the mental health of young people and national security.

“If one Chinese spy balloon poses a big enough threat to our country that it requires military action ... imagine 150 [million] Chinese spy devices in your home,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) said.

Nehls, who has three daughters, decried TikTok as a way for the CCP to feed American kids “addictive and harmful videos,” such as those that teach them self-harm, through its algorithm. He also called the app a CCP surveillance tool.

Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the viral Twitter page Libs of TikTok—which, as she told The Epoch Times after the press conference, seeks to “expose the far-left agenda that’s coming after our kids”—blasted what she said were negative effects on American children.

“TikTok is a weapon being used to groom our kids. Every single day in America, our children are under attack. Predators are lurking everywhere, trying to get access to your children to groom them,” she said.

“TikTok is designed to attract our impressionable youth. And groomers and predators know this and are using it to their advantage. Over the past few years, TikTok has become a cesspool for LGBTQ activists to target children with propaganda.”

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck said the app teaches American children to hate their own country. He said it must be banned, not completely divested by ByteDance—a move the Biden administration has been pushing for.

“We all know the code is poisoned. This is a toxic platform,” he said. “There is no removing China from the insides of this vile machine.”

Kara Frederick, a mother and the director of tech policy at the Washington-based conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, said TikTok influencers “can always go to another app.”

“But that mom in Pennsylvania, whose 10-year-old accidentally killed herself attempting the TikTok blackout challenge, she’s never going to get her daughter back,“ Frederick said. ”That girl who paid attention to the social contagions ... that TikTok’s algorithm supercharges who can never have kids because she took those drugs and believed those influencers, she’s never going to get her fertility back.”

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) said TikTok should be banned nationwide as there is “a generation of children who are confused, depressed, and afraid.”

“The Chinese Communist Party should not be allowed to conduct psychological warfare on our children and spy on their phone,” she said.

However, Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) partnered with TikTok influencers in a press conference outside the Capitol on March 22 in an attempt to preempt Nehls, Miller, Raichik, and the other activists pushing for TikTok to be banned. The progressive members of Congress and the influencers objected to the effort to ban the app, citing mental health, a sense of community, and other factors.

TikTok’s supporters even say the platform provides great livelihoods.

“Are we going to put a price on our children?” Miller asked.

Supporters Cry ‘Xenophobia’

Nonetheless, Bowman decried the effort to ban TikTok as an assault on free speech. He also took issue with what he said was the singling out of TikTok, calling it xenophobia.

“Why the hysteria and the panic and the targeting of TikTok? As we know, Republicans, in particular, have been sounding the alarm, creating a Red Scare around China,” he said. “They’ve been doing it in a variety of ways when it comes to economic competition, when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing, and when it comes to technology.”

Nehls called Bowman’s xenophobia label “nuts.”

Bowman appeared to downplay the national security threat TikTok poses.

“It poses about the same threat that companies like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube pose,” he said. “So let’s not marginalize and target TikTok.”

“While we’re worried about China harming our country, we are harming ourselves,” Bowman told The Epoch Times during the Q&A session following remarks from him, Pocan, Garcia, and a handful of TikTok influencers.

Bowman called for “comprehensive legislation” to deal with social media companies in terms of safety and privacy concerns.

Dan Salinger, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok, told The Epoch Times that the app helped him “get through COVID” and that “there is simply no substitute” for it. He acknowledged that “there’s a lot of national security concerns and data information concerns and those have to be addressed, no question.” He called banning the app “[throwing] out the baby with the bath water.” He also cited free speech concerns.

Facebook (almost 2.96 billion users), YouTube (more than 2.5 billion), and Instagram (2 billion) have more users than TikTok (a little more than 1 billion) according to Statista.

When asked why he can’t take his talents to YouTube and Instagram, Salinger said, “They’re just completely different apps.”

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Vitus Spehar, whose TikTok account UnderTheDeskNews has 2.9 million followers, lauded the app as being able to “democratize the conversation.”

Tim Martin, who talks about sports to his more than 1 million followers, told The Epoch Times that he feels a sense of a sports community with his platform.

At the end of 2022, President Joe Biden enacted, as part of signing the omnibus spending bill, a ban of TikTok on U.S. government devices.

TikTok is banned on federal devices and on government devices in almost half of the states. Multiple pieces of legislation have been introduced to ban TikTok nationwide. One bill is the No TikTok on United States Devices Act, introduced in January by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), which would effect that ban and prohibit commercial activity with ByteDance. Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) introduced a companion bill in the House.

“TikTok poses a threat to all Americans who have the app on their devices. It opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting,” Hawley said in a statement. “Banning it on government devices was a step in the right direction, but now is the time to ban it nationwide to protect the American people.”

Another bill, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or RESTRICT Act, introduced on March 7 by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.), would allow the secretary of commerce to ban TikTok, which the bill doesn’t call out by name, and “review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.”

The adversaries the bill names are China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. The White House supports the bill.