US POLITICIANS AMONG ENTHUSIASTIC TIKTOK USERS
But it is no less striking how US politicians, who have widely denounced the app, have also been among its most enthusiastic users.
With 5.5 million TikTok followers, the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has used the platform to appeal to younger voters. The video of Harris saying “you think you just fell out of a coconut tree” has been endlessly remixed, becoming a TikTok meme.
The Republican candidate Donald Trump, with 11.2 million followers, while in office sought to ban the Chinese app but now vows to “save TikTok”. His purpose, it seems, is both to curry favour with the company’s users and stick it to its rival Facebook, which he has strongly criticised.
It is understandable why some politicians may now be treading warily. TikTok remains wildly popular among its users.
The proportion of US adults supporting a ban on TikTok has fallen from 50 per cent in March to 32 per cent in August, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey. The shuttering of TikTok might also rebound on US social media platforms operating abroad, making it hard for Washington to object to Brazil’s recent banning of Elon Musk’s X, for example.
Moreover, it seems a little absurd for US politicians to worry so much about TikTok’s possible misuse of personal data when so much is already tradable online. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based digital rights organisation, has pointed out, Chinese entities could surreptitiously buy reams of personal data about US citizens from data brokers, just as scammers and criminals do.
The better solution, as the EFF has argued, would be to limit the personal data that any business, US or foreign, can harvest and sell about its users. A strong federal data privacy law protecting the rights of all users might be a more effective defence than banning TikTok.
