With a U.S. sell-off mandate looming, TikTok’s looking to highlight its value to the U.S. economy, as part of its latest effort to win critical support after a bill that would force its sale or ban moved quickly through the House.
According to a new report from Oxford Economics, TikTok contributed $24.2 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023, a number that TikTok is hoping will be enough to get at least some senators to vote against the proposal to force the app into U.S. ownership.
As per TikTok:
“According to research conducted in the summer of 2023, U.S. small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that marketed or advertised on TikTok generated nearly $15 billion in revenue in 2023. SMBs on TikTok also placed a significant value on the free services provided by TikTok, which help them grow organically. These two value streams together supported a $24.2 billion contribution to U.S. the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023.”
The report also found that almost 40% of SMBs say that TikTok is “critical to their existence”, while 224,000 jobs were supported by SMBs using TikTok as a platform to grow and expand their business.
Which is significant, and does add additional context to the TikTok sell-off debate, which reports suggest may be moving more slowly in the Senate. But at the same time, the numbers are being used in this sense as a means to avoid a ban of the app, but the proposal is not that TikTok should be banned in the U.S., but that it should be sold into U.S. ownership in order to alleviate concerns around the potential influence of foreign adversaries on the American public.
Which is the key focus. Much of the discussion around TikTok has related to U.S. user data, and the Chinese Government potentially building a database of information on citizens in other nations, but the bigger concern is influence, and how the C.C.P. could use TikTok to influence narratives around geopolitical, and local matters.
And that is, no matter how you look at it, a serious concern.
For years, the Chinese Government has been linked to various coordinated information efforts, which have been detected on pretty much every social media app.
In 2022, for example, Google disrupted over 50,000 instances of a Chinese influence program called “Dragonbridge” across YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense, while Meta has also detected many instances of Chinese influence operations, with the company removing almost 5,000 Facebook profiles linked to one such program in Q3 alone last year.
Given the scale of these China-based influence operations, it makes sense that a Chinese-owned app, which has reach to a billion users outside of China itself, would be an even more viable delivery tool for such programs, which are generally designed to sway opinions on China-based issues, and local concerns that relate to China’s interests.
It seems like a valid concern, and when you also consider that the Chinese Government has banned Meta, X and Google in China, as part of its own effort to manage content that’s not in the interest of the state, it seems like even its own logic would dictate that this is a valid concern.
But at the same time, China’s clearly not going to give up control of TikTok easily. Reports suggest that the C.C.P. will oppose any U.S. move against the app, which could indeed result in a full ban, if the Chinese Government holds firm to its case.
That still seems unlikely, given the money at stake (see visual above), but it is a possibility, as TikTok becomes a focus of broadening geopolitical debate.
But if anything, it also seems like The White House will be pushing even harder to enact a sell-off right now, in order to stamp out any potential manipulation heading into the election period.
U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democrats have largely supported the sell-off plan, while likely Republican candidate Donald Trump has opposed it. It seems, then, that the Democrats will want to get this through now, before TikTok uses any influence that it may have to help the Republican cause in the upcoming election campaign.
It’s still amazing to consider the scale of social media in the modern communications landscape, in that it’s now become a key element of debate among top political adversaries. But looking at the information on balance, it does seem like there is a valid concern here, and that a push against the app does make sense.
