TikTok Ban: Is The US Government Taking A Page From China's Censorship Book?

The recent divest-or-be-banned legislation aimed at TikTok has sparked a wave of debate over how much the government should be allowed to control people’s access to content and media.

The legislation, signed into law by President Joe Biden last week, gives the Beijing-based social media platform nine months to a year to sell its U.S. operations or face an outright ban.

While the law presents TikTok's parent company ByteDance with two options, some commentators, including the company's CEO, have said the dilemma is actually a moot point and lawmakers supporting the law passed it knowing it would effectively signify a ban on the platform.

The bill achieved bipartisan support after a series of classified briefings convinced lawmakers that having 170 million TikTok users in the country presents a sufficiently important national security risk to push the bill forward. 

On Monday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union might soon follow suit.

The event is a first in U.S. internet history. Congress has passed several laws aimed at responsible internet usage among the population, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which has the intent of stopping piracy and copyright violations. 

Certain types of content like child pornography are deemed obscene and therefore are illegal and not protected by the First Amendment, yet the TikTok bill marks the first time the federal government opens the possibility of banning a massively used app or site.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew has called the ban an attack on freedom of speech and promised his company will contest the law in court. 

Read also: Xi Jinping Puts On European Charm Offensive: Can China Woo EU Amid Simmering US Tensions?

What Is The Great Firewall Of China?

Named in reference to the country's ancient 13,000-mile fortification, the Great Firewall of China refers to a series of measures taken by the Chinese government to control internet traffic within the country's borders since the mid-1990s.

Visitor from another country will find that sites like Google and YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc GOOG; Facebook, owned by Meta Platforms Inc META; Wikipedia or Twitter won't work when connected to a Chinese wifi network or cell phone carrier. 

Apps like Instagram; Snapchat, owned by Snap Inc SNAP; and Whatsapp, as well as sites for all the major U.S. publications like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times Co NYT, are also banned, Time reports.

TikTok itself is banned in China. ByteDance offers Douyin, a cousin app with a similar design that adheres to the country's strict censorship laws. The app is the country's most popular short-video sharing app, with 700 million active monthly users last May, according to QuestMobile.

Some years after the internet arrived in China, the Chinese Communist Party began a campaign to block all sites that would conflict with the country's goals of "internet sovereignty," which aspires to control the inflow and outflow of information to keep in line with the party's ideology, The Washington Post reports.

The measures are aimed at avoiding at what the Chinese government views as the social, economic and national security risks of allowing foreign websites into the population's devices.

The consequences of the Great Firewall are palpable: China's main internet products and services are Chinese-owned. Baidu BIDU is the country's main search engine, while social platforms WeChat and Qzone, owned by Tencent Holdings ADR TCEHY, have the highest number of users.

Chinese people and foreigners can illegally access forbidden sites and apps in China by using a VPN service. 

The U.S. government has not made clear what method it would use to effectively ban the app in the country, making it hard to speculate how users might be able to bypass the government restrictions and still be able to use TikTok.

Benzinga's Take: The historic measure to force TikTok to divest its U.S. assets or face a ban can be seen within the context of a recent wave of protectionist measures that are gaining bipartisan support in Washington. 

As armed conflicts and geopolitical tensions gain weight in the political discussion, many Western nations, including the U.S., are developing protectionist measures in an effort to secure economic stability and national security as the global stage becomes increasingly unstable.

Limiting Chinese penetration into the U.S. economy has been a central part of Biden's plan to boost and protect domestic industries, including semiconductors and electric vehicles.

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