Meta Lobbied for TikTok Ban

The US social media giant used a GOP lobbying firm to push for a ban against its Chinese rival.

TikTok's US success prompted social media rival Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook, to use a Republican lobbying firm to stoke sentiment against its Chinese owner, according to a recent MSNBC article.  The result was a law requiring Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US company by January 19, 2025 or face an outright ban on app downloads.

The reasoning used by the U.S. Justice Department to push for the law is the same one used to enact extraordinary laws that deprive Asians and Asian Americans of basic universal rights: national security risk.  As a Chinese company TikTok may be required to give the Chinese government access to data on American users and possibly also shape opinion to favor Chinese interests, the Justice Department argued.

The law grants the executive branch authority to deem a country a “foreign adversary” and ban apps that comes from that country.   The law deems China a “foreign adversary”, allowed the Justice Department leeway to ban other apps from China.  However, the lawmakers who drafted the law made it clear that the primary focus of the law was to ban TikTok and its sister app Lemon8.

In response to the ban US TikTok users launched a crusade to encourage downloads of the Shanghai-based RedNote app to signal their anger with the U.S. government and Meta.  Thousands of TikTok users rely on the app for income.

Meta is best poised to gain from a ban.  It has introduced an app called Reels that mimics TikTok's short-video formats.  TikTok's popularity surged quickly after its US debut in 2018.  It already has 170 million US user, surpassing Meta's 115 US Instagram users and closing on its 223 million Facebook users.  By comparison YouTube has 203 million US users.

As with other nationality-based laws, the primary interest served is often private business and politicians exploiting the preoccupations of nationalistic constituents.  For example, the WWII Japanese American internment forced its victims, including many prosperous farmers and merchants, to sell their property to White competitors for pennies on the dollar.  More recent victims are Chinese scientists charged with spying for sharing allegedly sensitive data with China-based colleagues. 

Abuse of farfetched "national security" concerns to justify corrupt anti-Asian laws is considered by some to be a "Circle of Shame".  The circle encompasses the corrupt motives of demagogues and private parties exploiting national security concerns to justify measures that advance their interests.