President Joe Biden’s campaign is embracing TikTok to woo younger voters ahead of the presidential election, but U.S. adults have mixed opinions about whether the video-sharing app should operate in the country.
A new poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a three-way split when it comes to banning the app, with 31% of U.S. adults saying they would favor a nationwide ban on the app. use of TikTok, while 35% say they would oppose this type of action. A further 31% of adults say they are neither for nor against a ban on the social media platform, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.
Discussions about a TikTok ban reached a fever pitch in the United States early last year after a number of Western lawmakers, governments and regulators expressed concern that a series of Chinese laws could force the company to share videos. user data with the country’s authoritarian government. Specific evidence of such an incident has not been provided by the US government or TikTok’s critics, who also speculate that the platform could be used to spread propaganda beneficial to the Chinese government’s interests or be used to bury or amplify certain arguments .
TikTok has vigorously defended itself, saying in part that it has never shared data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. The company also promised to isolate U.S. user data from its parent company through a separate entity run independently of ByteDance and monitored by outside observers. TikTok says new user data is currently stored on servers operated by software company Oracle.
The White House reiterated this week that a review of the platform is underway by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which last year reportedly threatened to broadly ban the app if its Chinese owners didn’t surrender their shareholdings.
Meanwhile, congressional efforts to enact a broader ban — including bipartisan legislation that does not mention TikTok by name but would give the Commerce Department the power to review and potentially restrict its use — were stalled last year due to opposition from industry and digital rights groups, as well as some lawmakers, influencers and small businesses using the platform.
AP-NORC poll shows TikTok users – about 170 million in the US, most of whom are younger – are less likely to be concerned about the app sharing American users’ data, reflecting a generation gap previously warned. About a quarter of daily users say they are “extremely or very concerned” about the Chinese government obtaining users’ personal information, compared to about half of U.S. adults overall.
“It’s like a hot potato for politicians,” said Dan Ives, a technology analyst at financial consultancy Wedbush Securities. “Because in a way (they) want to look tough in front of the microphone. But then the reality is that it could backfire.
A majority of U.S. adults, 56%, said they would favor a more limited ban on TikTok on government devices, such as computers and public employee phones. Such bans have been implemented by at least 36 states, the federal government, and some other countries, as well as the European Union. About a quarter of US adults are neutral about blocking TikTok from government devices, while 17% are against.
The Biden campaign said it is using a separate cellphone for TikTok to isolate the app from other communications and is taking additional protective measures. Some Republicans criticized the decision.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, also told reporters Monday that he was concerned about the social media platform.
“We still have to find a way to follow India, which banned TikTok,” Warner said. “I’m a little concerned about a mixed message.”
In response to a question about whether the campaign’s use of the app counteracts the security concerns that have been raised, TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said: “We hope that politicians – of both parties – recognize the progress that we have made in protecting US users’ data, an effort that has placed us far above any other similar company in this space.”
Last year, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy joined the app in an effort to reach younger voters, despite calling it “digital fentanyl” that must be banned. Other Republican candidates have found other methods to spread their messages on the platform, such as producing video clips that could be shared between apps or working with conservative influencers already on the app.
The survey also found that about 6 in 10 US adults – and 41% of daily TikTok users – are “extremely or very concerned” about the amount of time children and teens spend on TikTok. A majority of adults, 59%, say they are concerned about the spread of misinformation on the app, while about half are concerned about people doing dangerous or illegal things they see others doing on the platform, which users feel less strongly about of TikTok.
TikTok said last year that it would implement time limits for minors. But these restrictions still allow teens to continue watching content after entering a passcode.
The company says it is also strengthening its work to counter misinformation by partnering with more global fact-checking organizations, among other initiatives. This week, TikTok said it will create fact-checking hubs within the app to help counter false information in the upcoming European Union elections.