For nearly three years, TikTok, the popular short-video social media app, has been under attack from the federal government. The United States, with the world's strongest constitutional protections for free speech and longtime advocacy of a globally open and free internet, is seriously considering banning a service that 94 million Americans use.
An August 2020 move by the Trump administration to ban TikTok by executive order was shut down by the federal courts, and the Biden administration has set in motion a governmental evaluation of the risk of apps connected to foreign adversaries. By now, seeing TikTok as a national security risk has spread on all levels of government and across both parties. Brandan Carr, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, has made banning TikTok his personal crusade. Ten GOP-led state legislatures have passed laws dictating which applications their employees can access in response to the alleged threat. In the final days of the 117th Congress, a bill banning TikTok on government devices passed the Senate unanimously. A bill to ban TikTok completely was introduced by two Senate Republicans—Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Gallagher (Wisc.) and one Democrat—Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.)—on December 13. Just this week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) added another "ban TikTok" bill to the pile.
