TikTok users demonstrated on March 13 at the U.S. Capitol, before it passed a bill that would lead to a ban of the video app.
| Photo Credit: AP

The young voices in the messages left for North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis were laughing, but the words were ominous.

“OK, listen, if you ban TikTok I will find you and shoot you,” one said, giggling and talking over other young voices in the background. “I’ll shoot you and find you and cut you into pieces.” Another threatened to kill Mr. Tillis, and then take their own life.

Mr. Tillis’s office says it has received around 1,000 calls about TikTok since the House passed legislation this month that would ban the popular app if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake. TikTok has been urging its users — many of whom are young — to call their representatives, even providing an easy link to the phone numbers. “The government will take away the community that you and millions of other Americans love,” read one pop-up message from the company when users opened the app.

‘Enormous influence’

Mr. Tillis, who supports the House Bill, reported the call to the police. “What I hated about that was it demonstrates the enormous influence social media platforms have on young people,” he said in an interview. While more aggressive than most, TikTok’s extensive lobbying campaign is the latest attempt by the tech industry to head off any new legislation — and it’s a fight the industry usually wins. For years Congress has failed to act on Bills that would protect users’ privacy, protect children from online threats and make companies more liable for their content, among other things.

“I mean, it’s almost embarrassing,” says Senate Intelligence Committee Chairperson Mark Warner, a former tech executive who is also supporting the TikTok Bill and has long tried to push his colleagues to regulate the industry. “I would hate for us to maintain our perfect zero batting average on tech legislation.”

Some see the TikTok Bill as the best chance for now to regulate the tech industry and set a precedent if a narrow one focused on just one company. President Joe Biden has said he would sign the House Bill, which overwhelmingly passed 362-65 this month after a rare 50-0 committee vote moving it to the floor. But it’s already running into roadblocks in the Senate, where there is little unanimity on the best approach to ensure that China doesn’t access private data from the app’s 170 million U.S. users or influence them through its algorithms.

‘Blurred lines’

The tech industry is broad and falls under the jurisdiction of several different committees. Plus, the issues at play don’t fall cleanly on partisan lines, making it harder for lawmakers to agree on priorities and how legislation should be written. Senate Commerce Committee Chairperson Maria Cantwell, has so far been reluctant to embrace the TikTok Bill, for example, calling for hearings first and suggesting that the Senate may want to rewrite it. “We’re going through a process,” Ms. Cantwell said. “It’s important to get it right.”

Some lawmakers are worried that blocking TikTok could anger millions of young people who use the app, a crucial segment of voters in November’s presidential election. But Mr. Warner says “the debate has shifted” from talk of an outright ban a year ago to the House Bill which would force TikTok, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd., to sell its stake for the app to continue operating.