(NewsNation) — A potential TikTok ban could work as a blueprint to restrict access to other apps, but enforcing even one ban will be nearly impossible, tech and government experts say.
Last week, lawmakers grilled the CEO of TikTok amid ongoing consideration of whether to ban the Chinese-owned app. Proponents cite national security concerns about disinformation, data collection and whether the app and its parent company ByteDance are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.
If an attempt to ban TikTok were successful, it could hypothetically set a precedent that could be used to ban other apps moving forward, Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program.
Enforcing those bans, however, is a different story. Removing the app in the Apple and Google stores might limit new users, but it would hardly be an across-the-board ban, West said.
“That would not necessarily affect the millions and millions of people in the United States who already have it on their phone,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly how you can take that back.”
Tools like VPNs can grant people access to content in other countries and videos from TikTok are often uploaded across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Besides, some experts view the popular video-sharing app as a cog in a larger machine.
It’s not just TikTok that collects data and is prone to disinformation or misinformation — every social media site is, said Doug Jacobson, a professor of electrical engineering at Iowa State University.
Facebook, for example, tells users it doesn’t sell their information. The platform does, however, accept money from advertisers who pay for Facebook to show its users personalized ads.
“The reason all these companies are free, the reason Facebook, Instagram, TikTok is free (is) because your data is paying for your ability to use it,” Jacobson said. “Your data is currency.”
Americans use plenty of other Chinese-owned apps including the instant messaging app WeChat, which — like many apps — also collects data. The battle over TikTok, however, has become the flashpoint of broader, rising tensions between China and the U.S.
“It’s kind of an easy thing to be tough on TikTok as a way of saying that you are tough on China in general,” West said. “But TikTok actually doesn’t have that much information.”
The FBI has raised concerns that Chinese law could require companies like ByteDance to turn over user data to the government. If ByteDance then sold to an American company per President Joe Biden’s request, the transaction would likely quell some of those fears.
“I think that takes the data stewardship question off the table,” Jacobson said. “It does not (answer) the question of what data they are collecting and what they’re doing. It puts them in the same bucket as your favorite social media platform(s) Facebook, and Instagram, etc. They’re all collecting.”