This past November, Canada’s Liberal government ordered TikTok to dissolve its Canadian business operations on November 6. The act does not remove the ability for Canadians to download or access the app, or post content, but presents a significant business disruption. TikTok has challenged this mandate, filing an application for judicial review with Canada’s federal court.
This follows a more aggressive move by the U.S. Congress and the previous presidential administration to ban U.S. providers from providing hosting and other web services to TikTok, unless ByteDance divests from the app by January 19, 2025. Following a last-minute intervention by President Trump, TikTok was able to continue operating past the deadline but has still not returned to U.S. app stores and cannot be updated. Additionally, President Trump’s directive may be challenged in court and could fail before a more permanent solution is found.
The similar moves by the U.S. and Canada follow similar justifications. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company. According to TikTok, 60% of the company is owned by global investors, 20 percent is owned by its founders, and 20% is owned by its employees. And while it may be owned by a Chinese-based company, TikTok itself is headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore. But as a result of ByteDance’s association with China, governments across the world have expressed concerns that influence by the Chinese government, which yields wide unilateral authority to affect corporate operations in the country, could be used to force tweaks to its algorithm to advance subversive content or misuse sensitive user data. The data at TikTok’s disposal is vast: the app has become a global phenomenon and economic powerhouse, attracting over 1 billion users worldwide. Over 170 million Americans and 14 million Canadians use the app.
This follows western relations with China growing increasingly tense in recent years. The West widely views the Chinese government as a foreign adversary, and American public opinion of China, for example, hit an all-time low in 2024.
While moves to restrict TikTok may seem like low-hanging fruit for hawkish policymakers, the proposals to do so do not address the real concerns that apps like TikTok, but also social media apps broadly, present to user privacy and security.
First, while concerns over national security risks by a known foreign adversary can be legitimate, Canada, the U.S., and various other countries have yet to present definitive proof that TikTok has misused user data or made material platform changes at the behest of the Chinese government. At this time, the justification for the laws targeting TikTok has been speculation.
As others have also pointed out, there is a broader concern in the TikTok debate about data privacy than just TikTok itself. TikTok, like many social media websites, collects and stores user data to reform its recommendation algorithms and ad targeting. However, as many have pointed out in opposition to the TikTok restrictions, this is not a unique feature of TikTok. All social media sites collect a plethora of user data for similar purposes. But if data privacy is the true concern, banning TikTok is only a small remedy to this issue that does not address the wider systemic need. Laws like Canada’s PIPEDA or California’s CCPA make progress on addressing this issue, but don’t go all the way to address the concerns laid out by data privacy activists.
Furthermore, TikTok is not uniquely vulnerable as a tool for the use of foreign interference. During the 2016 election, Facebook was used by Russian actors in an attempt to influence American public opinion on a large scale, and smaller attempts were made to use Google and Twitter for similar purposes. No evidence has been presented that TikTok has been used for foreign interference efforts.
TikTok serves as a lucrative platform for users, creators, and small businesses across the globe to build a virtual community. If users cannot access TikTok, they will simply move to alternative apps that can pose comparable or even more significant threats. We’ve already seen evidence of this movement in the wake of the U.S. TikTok ban. During the week leading up to January 19, U.S. downloads of RedNote — one of China’s most popular social media apps — nearly tripled, and over 700,000 new users joined the platform.
Outlawing TikTok in North America would have resounding economic and political consequences. According to an Oxford Economics report commissioned by TikTok, the app contributed over $24 billion to the U.S. GDP and $5.3 billion in tax revenue to the U.S. government in 2023. Presumably, a scaled impact on the Canadian economy and workforce would occur, too. If TikTok closes its operations in Vancouver and Toronto, hundreds of local jobs would be eliminated. Going after TikTok in North America not only has resounding economic repercussions — it is also an increasingly unpopular political position among voters. As of August 2024, only 32% of American voters supported a TikTok ban, falling from 50% in March 2023.
Forcing TikTok to dissolve its operations or outright banning the app is a temporary solution to the broader data and national security issues nations across the globe are facing. Federal governments can maintain the economic benefits of TikTok and act in accordance with the political interest of their voters, while preserving national security and protecting user data by adopting comprehensive data privacy policies.