I hate TikTok. It shouldn’t be banned

TikTok is, in my humble opinion, a pretty bad thing. The short-form video platform runs rampant with misinformation. It compromises its users’ privacy, both through the invasive tracking of information like a phone’s exact location, contacts and browsing history, and through a culture of oversharing, in which users divulge a wealth of personal information assuming nobody’s listening, only to have that information blow up overnight, arriving on countless others’ screens.

I also have to assume it’s terrible for your brain. The app curates very short-form content tailored to its user’s interests. When that burst of content is insufficiently engaging — if their interest lulls for just a few seconds — users can simply swipe their thumb and jump to the next video, get the hit of dopamine that comes with finding something new, and repeat.

In general, I think a lot of the rhetoric around “cellphone addictions” is culture war hype. But after a 10-minute stint with the app about two years ago, I moved to uninstall it: not because it didn’t deliver content I was interested in, but because I knew it would pull my attention away from everything else in my life if it stayed on my phone.

And there’s plenty more to dislike. It’s BS that the platform prevents anyone from opening links to its content without installing the app. It’s frustrating that it sometimes makes my loved ones late to things, because they get stuck in the cycle of scrolling. It’s disturbingly believable that the software was allegedly used to spy on American journalists, according to one FBI investigation.

But I don’t think it should be banned.

In 2024, Congress passed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” also known as H.R. 7521, effectively banning the app’s operation in the U.S., unless ByteDance — the brand’s owner, based in Beijing — divests from it. The Supreme Court heard arguments challenging the law last week, but justices seemed pretty skeptical, and it’s widely expected to take effect Jan. 19 unless lawmakers pass a last-minute bill to extend the deadline.

One could argue that the ban is needed to address any number of government concerns about the app, of which there are many. The sale of American users’ data to foreign governments is probably a threat to privacy. The app’s ability to track users’ locations could be exploited for intelligence in the event of an armed conflict or tense naval standoff somewhere like the South China Sea. The suspected harm to users’ attention spans could be bad news for schools, and in general for kids with still-developing brains.

All of these present reasonably compelling state interests, and the government should, probably, do things to prevent the sale of its taxpayers’ personal data, mask armed forces locations, encourage productivity in schools and promote healthy neurological development among children.

But there are alternative, more narrowly-tailored policies that could address any of the above. Other laws could absolutely restrict what data can be sold, and to whom, by social media companies. The Pentagon already bans TikTok on DOD-connected phones, while strongly discouraging its employees’ use of the app on personal devices. Governments could require schools to block the platform on their Wi-Fi networks if they’re worried about education impacts, or even require TikTok users to be older than 18, rather than the 13-year minimum in its current terms of service.

The only argument supporting an outright ban boils down to TikTok’s content: that the algorithm could be manipulated to poison Americans’ minds with Chinese propaganda, and that the only solution is to remove that metaphorical storefront from the marketplace of ideas.

“The national security harm arises from the very fact of a foreign adversary's capacity to secretly manipulate the platform to advance its geopolitical goals,” argued Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, on behalf of the U.S. government in the case. “The Chinese government's control over TikTok gives it a potent weapon for covert influence operations.”

Listen, I’m not a lawyer, or a judge, or a person with any kind of background in legal interpretation. I’m just a debate coach whose day job comes with a lot of feelings about the First Amendment. But Prelogar’s argument doesn’t sit right with me.

The Bill of Rights’ first order of business is fairly unambiguous. It denies Congress the authority to pass any law “abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

Sure, content creators outside the United States are not protected by the First Amendment. But TikTok is a platform, it’s a forum where Americans (and others) can digitally gather to share ideas, or in other words, “peaceably assemble.”

The Supreme Court heard several arguments against H.R. 7521 Jan. 10, only one of which was any good: TikTok argued the U.S. Federal Government couldn’t ban platforms of free speech just because they might spread problematic ideas.

“(Lawmakers) are ultimately worried that the ideas that appear on the TikTok platform could in the future somehow manipulate Americans, could somehow persuade them, could somehow get them to think something that they ought not be thinking,” said Noel Francisco, an attorney arguing on TikTok’s behalf before the Court. “That whole notion is at war with the First Amendment. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government cannot restrict speech in order to protect us from speech.”

Mr. Francisco is, frankly, correct.

Look, people express terrible ideas on social media all the time. The app that used to be called Twitter is chock-a-block full of neo-Nazis and Russian bots. Bluesky is the same, but for hipster communists. Facebook runs amok with scammers, Instagram influencers seem to love promoting thinly veiled health fads, Reddit users tend to form political echo chambers, and Tumblr bloggers are somehow universally anarchist.

The digital marketplace of ideas seems to sell mostly counterfeits. All of these platforms produce and share terabytes of misinformation every day through a mix of well-meaning but ignorant users and malicious bad actors.

But they also facilitate legitimate speech acts. I routinely use Facebook to find local news tips around Washington. I’m not on X (formerly Twitter) often, but a friend of mine used to run a popular account there dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons artwork. Similar communities are popping up on BlueSky, as it grows more popular. Reddit is consistently good at identifying weird bugs on my windowsill, and sharing funny Star Trek memes. Instagram keeps me up to date on the lives of acquaintances I’d otherwise lose touch with, and I’ve found a delightfully supportive network of creative writers on Tumblr.

We let these misinformation machines persist because they offer upsides, connections with one another that can’t really happen in a physical space. They let us assemble with people we’d never otherwise meet, exchange ideas we otherwise wouldn’t consider. A ban on the platform prevents such assembly.

Is TikTok also flooded with misinformation? Sure. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it could funnel that misinformation (or disinformation) strategically, to sow dissent among American users. But that’s hardly the most effective way for a foreign adversary to exploit the app.

According to a Senate intelligence briefing partially declassified in 2019, “Russian operatives associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) used social media to conduct an information warfare campaign designed to spread disinformation and societal division in the United States,” ahead of the 2016 election.

The operatives, “ … sought to polarize Americans on the basis of societal, ideological, and racial differences, provoked real world events,” mostly on Facebook and Twitter, with a handful of other accounts on Reddit, Tumblr, LinkedIn and YouTube, according to the report.

If a foreign power wanted to sow authoritarian sentiments or general discord in the U.S., they wouldn’t need to order a company to do it for them. It’s far easier, as Russia demonstrated, to hop online and do it yourself by plugging in any computer, buying a cheap VPN, and pretending to be an upset American voter. It also leaves way less of a paper trail than ordering a multinational company to quietly comply with a massive intelligence request.

TikTok is a digital place where people can virtually assemble. Every expression of joy, sorrow, musical taste, choreography and silly cat video reactions in that space is a speech act, as protected by The First Amendment.

Therefore, limits on that speech and assembly need to be narrowly tailored. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held First Amendment infractions to a standard of “strict scrutiny,” requiring lawmakers to avoid rules that inadvertently result in unnecessary censorship, even when that limitation comes at the expense of a law’s effectiveness.

Prelogar argued the bill met that standard, since Americans could still engage in all of their favorite speech acts as long as ByteDance sells TikTok to an American company, and then ceases to do business with that company.

But like, c’mon. That’s effectively a ban. ByteDance has two options: it can either take the limited blow of losing 170 million American users, out of more than 1 billion across the planet. Or it can sign away the rights to make money on all 1 billion users, and lose access to some of the most profitable software ever committed to code. Even if they could find a buyer with enough competence and capital, the latter is not an acceptable loss for any company, it’d be one of the worst business decisions ever made.

So this law is a ban. It’s a ban that says a purely hypothetical national security interest outweighs Americans’ rights to peaceably assemble in a digital space. It’s a ban that says Americans don’t get to choose which ideas they want to engage with online.

Americans have a God-given right to waste their time however they see fit, even when they do it on an app that absolutely stinks. Any law that denies that right flies in the face of so many others, that matter so much more.