by Yadi Younse
Chinese state media painted the U.S. Federal Government’s threats to ban TikTok if it is not sold to an American company as a “smash and grab” – and they weren’t wrong.
While the U.S. government alleged that TikTok is a national security risk and collects troves of personal data, it never enforced its ban or regulated the collection of personal information by TikTok and other social media platforms. The government could establish federal privacy laws that apply to TikTok and other social media platforms which would have been good for users – but that would not have been good for the companies making millions off user data. This was never about privacy, national security or killing TikTok. It’s was about eliminating competition, handing an asset to a billionaire, and facilitating the further monopoly of American social media big tech.
In 2020, the federal government threatened to ban TikTok if it was not sold to an American company, citing national security concerns. The allegations centered around the large quantity of personal information that TikTok collects on its users and that the Chinese government could have access to that information. There were additional concerns about the Chinese government weaponizing TikTok user’s personal information to censor or spread misinformation.
In response, TikTok in 2020 initially attempted to address the concerns which included creating a U.S. subsidiary to house part of the company’s operations through partnership with an American company to protect American’s user data. Called Project Texas, TikTok announced its planned partnership with Oracle to store American user’s data on Oracle’s U.S.-based cloud servers.
There were concerns with Project Texas, including the concern about Oracle’s lack of protection of user’s privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) sent a letter about their privacy concerns to Oracle and seeking assurances about Oracle’s commitment to user privacy.
In response, Oracle bombastically gas-lit EPIC saying the privacy and legal concerns were “very theoretical”. Oracle’s lawyers scoffed at EPIC’s concerns in their September 25, 2020 letter calling them “…speculation, hyperbole and innuendo, which does little to support your very theoretical claims” and “your many inaccurate references to Oracle business and business practices demonstrate that you fail to understand Oracle’s core business of the past 40+ years… you have Oracle confused with large consumer-facing tech platforms that make their billions on advertising by exploiting the personal data of their users. Oracle is a technology licensing and services company, focused on infrastructure and data security.”
Oracle could have taken the opportunity to acknowledge very real concerns about protecting people’s privacy and personal information and assuage those concerns with commitments to protect user’s data. Instead it raked EPIC through the coals, lambasting EPIC’s audacity to even suggest Oracle could misuse people’s personal information.
Well….then, in 2024 Oracle settled a class action lawsuit for $115 million (Katz-Lacabe v. Oracle) for amassing and selling troves of people’s information in violation of state and federal privacy laws. Oof. Anyhow, the federal government did not find that Project Texas sufficiently allayed national security concerns.
ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) CEO asserted in an internal email that the U.S. government wants to eliminate TikTok entirely, but the lack of actually enforcing the ban shows otherwise.
Instead, the federal government is giving into the whims and whines of American tech companies who have lost tremendous market share to TikTok and are finding themselves unable and unwilling to compete. This falls perfectly in line with their playbook of elimination competition or buying up their competitors. Peter Thiel said as much in his 2014 letter “Competition is for Losers” in which he advocates building monopolies.
Mark Zukerberg’s Meta targeted potential competitors to Facebook and purchased them like Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook also attempted to purchase Snap.
Why build great products and compete on the open market – which is much harder to do than just eliminating or buy out your competitors. TikTok has taken a lot of market share from its American social media rivals, and since it is not a U.S.-based company it is more difficult to acquire. Hence, the song and dance we have just witnessed. A multi-year process to safely convey Tik-Tok to American ownership and control.
And that is why despite the 2024 law passed by U.S. Congress, “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA)” essentially banning TikTok, was never enforced. Instead, the Federal Government has extended the enforcement a fifth time to December 2025 to help facilitate a deal to get TikTok into the hands of American oligarchs.
All social media platforms carry data security and privacy risks – including but not limited to TikTok – and Americans deserve to have their personal information kept private no matter what social media platform they use and who owns and operates the platform.