‘Historic moment’: Hong Kong passes domestic national security law after marathon session, fast-tracking legislation shelved for two decades
“I just called them of my own accord,” small-business owner Ben Stanley said angrily in a video, noting that he never even saw the notification. Stanley shared a recording of his call to his congresswoman, Mary Miller of Illinois, in which he vowed to spend the next two weeks actively campaigning against her and her party if she voted for the bill.
Lawmakers are also worried about the potential for TikTok to manipulate its algorithm to influence users towards Beijing’s narratives. Though they have not presented evidence for this concern, it is one that has grown since the Israel-Gaza war when pro-Palestinian messaging spread on the app. “Just because the Congress is falling all over itself for each member to demonstrate how hawkish they are on China, that doesn’t mean compromising the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment,” Himes said.
Any ban on TikTok will cause “huge harm to our national economy,” he added, noting that some business owners rely solely on the app. As the most vocal antagonist to a TikTok ban in the Senate, Rand Paul has spoken consistently against giving “unprecedented authority to President Biden and the surveillance state”. In 2023, Paul blocked an effort by Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, to fast track a TikTok ban bill through the Senate, and pledged last week to stop such attempts for Gallagher’s bill in the chamber.
“Divestiture would be difficult given any time frame, but likely almost impossible in six months,” said Caitlin Chin-Rothmann of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. But while TikTok’s efforts to address security concerns are something that TikTok users have picked up on, they have had little sway over lawmakers.
For the majority of lawmakers, however, constituent engagement was one of many factors, or did not factor in much at all in their stance.