TikTok Gets 9 Months
Senate approves massive spending: Last night, the $95 billion aid package meant for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan passed the Senate. “The vote reflected resounding bipartisan support for the measure, which passed the House on Saturday by lopsided margins after a tortured journey on Capitol Hill, where it was nearly derailed by right-wing resistance,” reports The New York Times. “The Senate’s action, on a vote of 79 to 18, provided a victory for the president, who had urged lawmakers to move quickly so he could sign it into law.”
“When it matters most, will America summon the strength to come together, overcome the centrifugal pull of partisanship and meet the magnitude of the moment?” asked Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) in an address announcing the bill’s passage. “Tonight, under the watchful eye of history, the Senate answers this question with a thunderous and resounding ‘yes.'” (If only the “centrifugal pull” were strong enough to force legislators to actually consider whether the federal government actually has that kind of money to spend, the answer to which would probably be a “thunderous and resounding” NO.)
TikTok’s death knell: The House had divided the bill into four pieces, which were then combined for voting in the Senate. The last part of the package—and possibly the most controversial—forces the social media app TikTok to be either sold to an American buyer or, if it retains Chinese ownership, banned in the United States. Expect the ban to be challenged in court, and for the government to have to flesh out its national security-related justifications for this to pass muster.
“There’s a speed to how TikTok facilitates conversations and trends, and its algorithm is unnervingly good at picking up on a user’s interests and showing them what they want to see,” writes The Atlantic‘s Kate Lindsay. “You could use the app for just five minutes and come away with a new song to listen to, a new recipe to try for dinner, and a new piece of kitchenware already being packed up and shipped to you.”
But the app definitely isn’t a universal good, and it’s shifting in concept, turning into what feels like a shopping platform, akin to Instagram’s pivot to e-commerce. “It went from a plaything for regular people—the dancing tweens, the animal antics—to a stage for brands and creators, and continues to make moves that push itself further from its original premise,” argues Lindsay. That shift aside, there are plenty of indicators that the app may have already been on track to lose popularity even if the government had never intervened: new user growth is plateauing, and the old people—those in their 30s and 40s, compared to the app’s Zoomer mainstays—are crashing the party.
Still, what happens in the long run remains to be seen. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been given nine months to broker a deal
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