Victoria Gonzalez/Vaquero Radio
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to delay the federal ban of TikTok for 75 days, but the legality of the decision and the platform’s future in the U.S. remains unclear.
The order was issued Jan. 20 and was one of the first executive orders Trump signed following his inauguration.
Under this order, Trump instructed the U.S. attorney general not to take any action to ban the app, buying his administration time to determine how to move forward.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it illegal for American companies to continue their services with TikTok unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the app to a non-Chinese owner.
The ruling enforced a bipartisan law signed by former President Joseph Biden under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act after concerns of the Chinese government targeting and manipulating Americans through online applications.
The law gave ByteDance nine months to divest from TikTok or face a nationwide ban by Jan. 19.
TikTok went dark in the U.S. Jan. 18, a few hours before the ban was initially scheduled to take place, giving users a notification that read, “A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok right now.”
The notification gave credit to Trump for working on a solution to keep TikTok for American users.
Hours after the app shut down, users were able to access the platform again, and TikTok attributed the president’s efforts for its return.
During Trump’s first presidential term, he advocated for TikTok’s ban and signed an executive order on Aug. 6, 2020, which stated that China was threatening national security, foreign policy and the economy.
This time around, Trump said TikTok was worthless if he didn’t approve it as he sat in the Oval Office Jan. 20 while signing executive orders. He added the U.S. might have a joint venture with TikTok.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld its decision on TikTok earlier this year. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the only two ways to overturn a decision is to have a new ruling or by changing the law.
According to the American Bar Association, an executive order is a written policy directive issued by the president. Since it is not legislation, Congress does not need to approve them nor can it overturn them.
Associate Professor for the UTRGV Department of Political Science Andrew Smith said executive orders are not supposed to supersede any acts of Congress and added Congress has given no indication to challenge the order.
“Given the fact that the executive has been left with no leeway on ignoring the ban or not, President Trump’s executive order is not supposed to override Congress’s stated intent and passage of law,” Smith said. “So, if no one is really challenging the executive order, then the executive order winds up having the force of law, even if it shouldn’t. I think it gets [to the] bigger issue of the checks-and-balances system and the ability of a president to simply ignore the law.”
If the executive order is challenged in court, Smith said TikTok would shut down if the court said the president is not above the law; however, if the court decides the order is fine, TikTok would remain active until it is bought.
“And, there’s also [still the] battle over TikTok issues of freedom of speech and whether Congress, in trying to claim national security threats from TikTok’s current ownership structure, [is] stifling a platform that can allow people to spread alternative viewpoints that go against the government narrative,” he said. “It gets into issues of the ability of Congress to tackle social media and also gets into, you know, … is it politically a wise thing for Congress to override the wishes [of people]?”
Smith added because the president is a populist, a power dynamic that focuses on what’s popular with the public, it is in Trump’s best political interest to prevent TikTok from getting banned.
“But, it’s something he can use to be, like, you know, ‘I listen to the people, unlike these other politicians,’ you know, ‘I did what was popular with the public, even if, no matter what Congress said, you should keep voting for me.’”
Professor for the UTRGV Department of Informatics and Engineering Systems Hansheng Lei said like any other app, TikTok has its own vulnerabilities to security risks.
“So people, some hackers, can make a use of that,” Lei said. “Even the Zoom [that we’re] using, they have vulnerabilities. Some people already posted the leaked recordings online to show that Zoom is not safe either, so that’s [the] same for every [app]. There’s no exception for that. So, I don’t think anything special for TikTok. They have their problems, too. So, we just need to use it properly, try to maybe enforce some procedures, right? That’s maybe the better solution.”
Assistant Professor for the UTRGV Department of Informatics and Engineering Systems Jorge Castillo said there might be a growing concern of privacy. Given that TikTok is associated with a foreign entity.
“They might try to push some type of misinformation, propaganda by simply manipulating the algorithms that they use to collect all this data and process this data,” Castillo said. “The influence of, you know, foreign countries, essentially, you don’t want any type of data … to be in the hands of someone else, right, some foreign party.”
With the main point surrounding national security threats to America by the Chinese government, Smith said there are questions if Trump has been compromised by foreign governments.
“So, if a man that called TikTok a national security threat is suddenly turning around and actively [supports] it, then that [raises] questions about whether the Chinese government has compromised the president,” he said.
Lei highlighted one of the main points of the TikTok ban is how data is manipulated and managed. He said as long as those issues are taken care of, the U.S. should be OK with any app.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of some app,” Lei said, “We should be afraid of how we use them, who [uses] them. That’s something we should care [about] instead of banning some particular app. I don’t think it’s helpful, so the solution is to take care of them, how to use them, like, regulate them. We use regulation instead of simply banning it. By banning any particular apps, I don’t think we have a strong, I mean, foundation legally, you know, to do that. It’s just something unethical, right? Unfair, to be simple.”
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in March 2023 showed 46% of individuals ranging from 18 to 29 opposed the TikTok ban while 71% of people 65 and older supported it.
Smith said Trump allowing TikTok to stay in business will be highly popular, considering a lot of younger people were not in favor of the ban.
“And, that’s one of the things I think President Trump could cite, at least in the political battle, is, you know, ‘I’m doing something popular. This is something that a lot of Americans want, so, you know, I should be able to do it’ versus the idea of, well, just because the public wants something doesn’t mean that you have the authority to override what Congress has deemed law, what’s been signed into law,” he said.
Smith said the president may find a buyer that will at least listen to his demands. If Trump does not like the content on the app, then there is nothing stopping him from placing pressure on the company to take it down.
“There’s nothing that stops President Trump from going to them and saying, you know, ‘I did this for you, I want you to take down these accounts that have been so critical of me or else,’” he said. “And, you know, most of the time, that’s going to work as a credible threat.”
If Trump were to have this order go into effect, Smith said the president can ignore the law if he sees fit, seeing this as a dangerous precedent for the balance of power between the executive branch and Congress.
“If the president is simply allowed to defy law, is this investing too much power in the hands of the executive and giving the executive the green light to possibly ignore more laws because he thinks he can get away with it?” he said. “And you don’t want [anybody] in a democracy to have that ability or to have that feeling that they’re above the law.”
TikTok’s privacy policy states it collects users’ data, such as image, audio, device and user information, as well as cookies, metadata and location.
Lei said most people don’t read through the full policy, making users unaware of what their data is being used for, adding privacy policies should be more transparent to users.
“Instead of hiding the policy in a long description nobody [reads], I think that’s something we can improve if we believe TikTok has some special or harmful privacy policy,” he said. “We can define them, right, [to make it] stand out.”
Smith added if Congress stands up to Trump, or if the ban is enforced, companies who continue to allow users to download TikTok may look at possible lawsuits and fines.
Because TikTok is owned by a foreign nation, Lei said some people may feel unsafe.
He said he believes the app’s infrastructure is the same as other platforms because they have the same cloud server structure, a virtual server that stores data and runs applications, according to Microsoft Azure.
“They have people [monitoring] it every day,” Lei said. “You just need to handle that, don’t blame the technology. If you feel that data is [lowly secured], then just put [security] in your cloud server. If you think that their infrastructure needs improvement, then you can enforce improvement.”
Castillo said there are not many federal regulations for TikTok, but if the government were to implement something such as The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a privacy act in the European Union that protects personal data, then it would create a precedent for regulation.
“I mean, regulation is good to certain extents , but if you start to overregulate them [by] opening those doors, then how do we know that it’s going to stop with TikTok?” he said.
Smith said if the president is successful in getting a buyer that pledges to not track Americans and sell user data to foreign governments, then this could be a good sign the national government is protecting Americans from adversarial foreign governments.
He added by banning the app, Congress can set a precedent of apps who want to operate in the U.S. to respect people’s privacy and data. Smith also said a worry among tech advocates is that the law might lead to more internet censorship, regardless if the national security concerns were legitimate or not.
“Setting up a situation like what you have in China, where social media apps are heavily censored by the government, where some websites just won’t load at all,” he said. “So, the idea is that the Supreme Court is giving Congress too much leeway in using national security concerns to stifle freedom of speech. … Does the president or Congress get to use national security so broadly that, all of a sudden, it can shut down social media platforms simply for saying something mean about the president, or about Congress or something like that? I mean, where does it end?”
The extension for TikTok ends April 5.
This is Victoria Gonzalez for Vaquero Radio.
