Timeline of US-TikTok Maelstrom

Washington is continuing its crackdown on TikTok, as a proposal to prohibit the use of the Chinese app by federal employees on government-owned devices will reportedly be incorporated into an omnibus spending bill up for lawmakers' vote this week.

According to cited insiders, the TikTok ban will be discussed as part of the purportedly $1.7 trillion package currently being negotiated to finance daily operations of government agencies for the current fiscal year that began on October 1.

Earlier, as part of a plethora of moves targeting Chinese tech companies, US lawmakers in the Senate passed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act. The legislation, sponsored by Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and approved on December 14, cites national security concerns for its proposed ban on the short-form video app from government smartphones, tablet PCs, and laptops.

Hawley slammed TikTok as a "Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party," and insisted that it presented a major security risk to the United States.

To become law, the bill also needs to be passed by the House of Representatives and, subsequently, signed by President Joe Biden.

The anti-TikTok legislation passed the Senate after half a dozen US states, including Alabama, Utah, South Dakota, Texas, and Maryland also enacted bans on the use of TikTok by state employees. State officials have accused the app of harvesting data on its users to allow China to ostensibly "manipulate" the American people. According to the US press, the United States Armed Forces have also blocked the app from their military gadgets.

In previous years, bills seeking to ban the app, which currently has one billion active users across 154 countries, passed the US Senate and House, but stopped short of being signed into law.

Since it was first launched in 2016 by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, then under the name “Douyin," the social media platform has become a go-to medium for young people to express themselves. ByteDance also purchased another social media app - Musical.ly - that allowed users to create and share 15-second lip-sync videos on their platform. The app was eventually ditched, with its features incorporated into Douyin.

ByteDance went global in August 2018, launching the TikTok app as a product meant for overseas, as well. Users could create and share short videos of themselves singing, dancing, lip-syncing, or otherwise making themselves heard with the help of mobile devices or webcams. One of the reasons for TikTok's allure was its algorithm, which zooms in on users’ preferences based on how individuals interact with the app.

A "singing & dancing" app may sound pretty innocuous, but it is this highly personalized algorithm that has since resulted in Washington lawmakers branding the app "highly addictive and highly destructive."

In 2019, TikTok ran afoul of a US federal law - the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). After a probe carried out by the US Federal Trade Commission, TikTok was pronounced to have violated the COPPA by allegedly illegally harvesting personal information from children during sign up without due parental approval. As a result, TikTok was slapped with a $5.7 million fine.

As TikTok continued to boost its audience across the US, the global phenomenon's Beijing roots started to irk Washington, with reports suggesting censorship on the app. Thus, it was alleged that TikTok's moderators were censoring videos mentioning topics deemed "offensive" by the Chinese government and Communist Party.

A case in point was coverage of the Hong Kong protests. Unrest rocked the semi-autonomous city that returned to Chinese rule in 1997 over a local government-proposed mechanism to extradite fugitives to mainland China. Although the semi-autonomous city's authorities suspended the bill on June 15, demonstrations turned violent in the prominent financial hub. After US media embarked on a search for “#hongkong” on TikTok, the purportedly marked absence of such hashtags triggered speculation of "Chinese-style censorship."

In response, the company underscored that TikTok was an entertainment venue, not tailored to throw the spotlight on sensitive topics such as the protests in Hong Kong. TikTok also stated that data of American users was stored domestically and that the app’s content moderation policies were spearheaded by a US-based team.

In October 2019, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote a letter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, urging a government probe into possible "counterintelligence risks" posed by TikTok due to its data-collection practices.

“With over 110 million downloads in the U.S. alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore... Given these concerns, we ask that the Intelligence Community conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and other China-based content platforms operating in the US and brief Congress on these findings,” they wrote.

After recommendations issued by the US Defense Department's Defense Information Systems Agency in December 2019, in January 2020 the US military banned its soldiers and employees from using TikTok on government-issued mobile devices.

In its December 16 message to the military branches, the Pentagon claimed there was “potential risk associated with using the TikTok app,” as it urged employees to prevent “unwanted actors” from getting access to data by removing the app.

A plethora of child privacy advocates filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission, accusing TikTok of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and, ostensibly, flouting the agreement pertaining to its February 2019 settlement.

"TikTok agreed to...destroy all personal information collected from users under 13 years of age. In fact, however,...we found that TikTok currently has many regular account holders who are under age 13, and many of them still have videos of themselves that were uploaded as far back as 2016," they stated.

In response, the company said that it took privacy "seriously and (we) are committed to helping ensure that TikTok continues to be a safe and entertaining community for our users."

TikTok also pointed out that it had installed "view-only" experiences for users under 13 in the US, barring them from sharing personal information and limiting content and user interaction.

The Donald Trump administration was incensed after a TikTok prank to register for a rally by the 45th POTUS in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 21 went viral. The Trump campaign’s official account posted a tweet calling on supporters to register for free tickets using their phones. Then TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music ostensibly began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally but fail to show up.

In early July, Donald Trump first made mention of a potential ban on TikTok during an interview, saying that it "[is] something we're looking at, yes." With the COVID-19 pandemic underway at the time, and Trump blaming China for the health cataclysm, the POTUS said:

"It's a big business. Look, what happened with China with this virus, what they've done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful," adding that banning the app could be "one of many" ways to punish Beijing.

The US Congress later passed a bill on July 22 banning federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices.

Throughout the summer of 2020, Donald Trump targeted TikTok with a series of executive orders that would have required Apple and Google to remove the app from their app stores, in effect preventing new users from downloading it. Furthermore, in a series of restrictions that were due to take effect on November 12 that year, the Trump administration sought to stop any American company from providing service to TikTok.

However, the ban was temporarily halted by US District Judge Carl Nichols in September 2020 at the request of ByteDance, with the US Commerce Department agreeing at the time to “comply with the injunction," but defending Trump's executive order demanding that TikTok's owner divest itself of operations in US companies. Oracle and Walmart were among those corporations greenlighted by the US to take over the Chinese app. In October, another federal district court judge from Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump's efforts, while referring to his national security concerns as "hypothetical."

The Trump administration's targeting of TikTok came as part of its contentious trade war against Beijing, which involved the blacklisting of China's Huawei Technologies, ZTE, and dozens others in May 2019, citing national security concerns.

As for TikTok, it continuously stated that the Trump administration could not provide substantial evidence that it had posed any national security risk to the United States.

Newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden sought to overturn his predecessor's actions aimed at banning TikTok. Thus, in June 2021, Biden revoked the Trump executive order seeking to prohibit the app, replacing it with a call for a broader review of foreign-controlled apps potentially fraught with national security risks.

Fresh controversy regarding privacy concerns linked to TikTok was triggered after US media reported that its data on US users was allegedly accessed in China by employees of the parent company ByteDance. On June 28, 2022, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr called on Apple and Google to ditch TikTok from its app stores, while nine Republican senators also sent a letter to TikTok seeking answers regarding its handling of American users' data.

In August 2022, the US passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which has been described by Western observers as a new US policy of "actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry."

Amid the swirling accusations, on December 8, TikTok issued an official statement, announcing that it was creating "a Trust & Safety team within US Data Security (USDS) to build further trust and confidence in the protection of US user data and compliance."