TikTok Ban: Unsettling Implications Of The RESTRICT Act
Tyson Lewis | April 13, 2023
In a March 23, 2023 hearing regarding the social media app TikTok, the U.S. Congress asked TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew an onslaught of questions. The hearing played out amidst broader discourse on the proposed RESTRICT Act, which threatens to ban TikTok and may include much more within its vague language. While banning TikTok itself has unsettling connotations, the implications of the proposed bill extend to the ways the internet is used in a much broader sense.
TikTok has garnered a user base of over 150 million Americans engaging with the app, as both a social media and entertainment platform.
This trend of legislative bodies being hostile to the social media company is not unique to the US, as Canada and several European countries have also started to consider restricting access to the app. On February 27, 2023, the white house had suggested that the app be removed from government devices within 30 days.
The proposed ban is primarily in regards to the app’s parent company Bytedance. This is a Chinese company, and as such, congress had concerns that American information may be accessible to the Chinese state. The RESTRICT Act outlines China among a list of adversaries.
“Foreign Adversary” is the label for the following countries as stated in the bill:
“(i) the People’s Republic of China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macao Special Administrative Region;
(ii) the Republic of Cuba;
(iii) the Islamic Republic of Iran;
(iv) the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea;
(v) the Russian Federation; and
(vi) the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela under the regime of Nicolás Maduro Moros.”
These fears encouraged congress to direct pointed questions about China at the Singaporean CEO, including questions about China’s persecution of Uyghurs. He replied by condemning human rights abuses, but explained that his role was to answer questions about TikTok.
Some questions exemplified legislators' lack of technological understanding. A bizarre instance of this being when GA Representative Buddy Carter asked if TikTok uses people’s eye dilation for an algorithm. Chew responded that the app only views peoples’ eyes for filters wherein the app may put sunglasses on the user, to which Carter again asked why the app needs to see users eyes if not for monitoring the dilation.
Suffice to say, many content creators and users of the app immediately clocked this as a particularly out of touch question. Users of the app joked about needing an age cap on congress in response to the interaction.
As mostly younger people use the app, there is a clear discrepancy between who wants the ban to go into effect and who doesn’t. Unsurprisingly, the percentage of people who support the ban progressively increases alongside age demographics.
The PEW research center found that more than double the number of people who oppose the ban do support the ban. 50 percent of people support the ban, as opposed to 22 percent being against the ban. This is scary when considering that the means of banning the app would be through the RESTRICT Act.
The act in itself does not explicitly ban TikTok; instead, it would allow the Commerce Department to assess the risks of various technologies or platforms for their relations to the six adversary nations listed above.
The way to get around national bans, or even simply to access specific content on the internet from other countries, is a VPN — a service that is crucial for privacy on the internet by obscuring your IP address.
Members in support of the bill argue that they do not intend to use the bill to target individuals but instead exclusively companies. Unfortunately this is not explicitly stated in the bill itself.
The primary issue with this bill is that it seems more concerned with internet interconnectivity to foreign countries, as opposed to concerns over surveillance or individual privacy. Progressive lawmakers push instead for an internet privacy act similar to acts already adopted by other countries.
As an avid user of the internet, and someone who regularly gets around America’s particularly strict piracy regulations of internet content; privacy as a user is a far greater concern than a nebulous fear of China or other “foreign adversaries”.
Not to be mistaken as a broad supporter of China, but American corporations also similarly engage in data mining for the purposes of selling targeted products to American users. Moreover, the American state also similarly engages in human rights abuses.
A more specific privacy bill would actually mean protecting people from intrusions of privacy. Alternatively, the RESTRICT Act only protects people's privacy from specific countries while leaving American users vulnerable to the same abuses domestically. The problem for congress is not the invasion of privacy, but instead who gets to invade our privacy.