TikTok Ban Edges Closer—And The Internet Is Furious

The clock’s ticking for TikTok. Reports emerging over the past two weeks have revealed that the Chinese video sharing app is edging ever closer to being banned in the United States. This, unsurprisingly, has led to a huge online backlash, with many people furiously making memes and posting about this turn of events.

The internet’s reaction to the potential TikTok ban is particularly intriguing because of the unique relationship the United States has with free speech and social media.

Let’s take a step backwards before we get there though.

What Is The TikTok Ban? And Why Might It Happen?

On April 24, 2024, Joe Biden signed a bill which would ban TikTok if its owner, ByteDance, doesn’t sell the app within a year.

This kicked off a series of events, from lawsuits to appeals to the First Amendment, in which the company tried to keep the platform within the United States. On December 6 though, ByteDance lost its initial legal effort. Despite this, the business announced it will appeal to the Supreme Court over the decision.

The New York Times reports that the reason the U.S. government is taking this approach, as it has “concerns that the Chinese government could gain access to sensitive user data through the short-form video app.”

All this could lead to TikTok being banned in the United States as soon as Jan. 19, 2025, although this could be pushed back if the Supreme Court uphold the appeal.

How Has The Internet Reacted To The Proposed TikTok Ban?

People online aren’t too pleased about this potential TikTok ban. What’s interesting though is, on the surface, there are different reasons why people are so wound up.

One of the most common, especially on TikTok, are people worried about the impact this will have on their livelihood:

There’s a deluge of these on the social network, with combined views in the tens of millions.

Beyond these personal interpretations of the potential TikTok ban, there are also a number of posts about the political ramifications of such a move, whether that’s implying the United States wants to maintain control over social networks:

Or how individuals see the potential ban in regards to party politics in the U.S.:

Another common type of post positions TikTok as a bastion for free speech and anti-authoritarian views, such as this one that shares a song highlighting negative aspects of the U.S. healthcare industry:

What Do The Various Reactions To The Potential TikTok Ban Mean?

The fascinating element among the public outcry to the TikTok ban news is that although individuals are coming at it from different angles, there is a factor uniting them all: cognitive dissonance between the U.S. constitution and online freedom.

The growth of the internet was positioned by many as a new frontier for free speech. William Fisher wrote in a paper for Harvard Law School that many found the outpouring of speech and freedom the internet offered to be “exhilarating,” and “nothing less than the revival of democracy and the restoration of community.”

Considered from this angle, one can draw parallels between the online world and the core tenets of free speech and expression in the U.S. Constitution.

What this has led to, in the main at least, is the American government not being particularly heavy handed when it comes to internet regulation — especially compared to places like the European Union. In fact, the U.S. is commonly referred to as being “the most permissive” example of online internet regulation in the world.

Of course, obscene content has been censored, and services that clearly broke intellectual property laws, like Napster, WikiLeaks, and The Pirate Bay were shuttered, but, for the average person, the internet remained broadly open in the United States.

This is a far cry away from countries like China, which continually bans websites, including online stalwarts like YouTube, The New York Times, and Wikipedia.

Because of its history and constitution, the United States and many of its citizens define themselves against this strict regulation, with free speech being a fundamental part of the country’s culture.

So when something like a potential TikTok ban arises, and the platform isn’t openly doing anything illegal, there’s a sense of wrongness and cognitive dissonance that’s afoot. This move, it can be argued, is contrary to the very culture of the United States.

On the surface level, much of the anger is for different reasons, this disparity between national identity and government action may be an underlying cause for the vicious and confused reaction to the ban.

Free speech is constitutional and a core aspect of the internet, and without irrefutable proof of TikTok’s wrongdoing, it’s likely many people online will remain frustrated and enraged about this potential ban.