It’s been a tough few weeks for TikTok. An settlement with a authorities interagency group that it was relying on, which might permit the Chinese language-owned app to proceed to function within the US, appears to have fallen aside. With out it, President Biden will doubtless quickly must make a remaining choice in regards to the app: demand a sell-off, and be able to ban TikTok if its proprietor ByteDance gained’t oblige.

TikTok’s future within the US has maybe by no means been in additional doubt than it’s proper now. The established order — an deadlock the place TikTok operates as regular with the seemingly empty risk of a ban hanging over its head — gained’t be tenable for for much longer. However the decisions that the US and ByteDance are left with don’t appear very tenable, both.

This week may present new clues about TikTok’s destiny as its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, testifies earlier than Congress for the primary time. If he can discover a couple of minutes in between being shouted at by varied members of Congress, Chew will doubtless attempt to make the case to the American folks that his app is protected, and that considerations over its hyperlinks to the Chinese language Communist Occasion are overblown. TikTok’s detractors imagine the Chinese language authorities could also be utilizing the app to gather knowledge about its customers, together with People, and pushing content material by means of its advice algorithm to affect the minds of the app’s younger-skewing person base.

Chew has been TikTok’s CEO for practically two years, however you in all probability didn’t hear or see him a lot till not too long ago. When a TikTok govt needed to testify earlier than Congress in September 2022, it despatched chief working officer V Pappas, a extra well-known determine on the US tech scene — they labored at YouTube earlier than becoming a member of TikTok in 2019, and briefly served as TikTok’s interim CEO earlier than Chew took the reins. Pappas has additionally been pleased to present the occasional interview to the press. Chew is predicated in Singapore and saved a low profile within the US till not too long ago when he started to make TikTok’s case to the media and appealed straight to numerous members of Congress, after a take care of the federal government that might permit TikTok to function right here seemingly turned much less doubtless.

Now Chew will get what’s more likely to be a public grilling from lawmakers, as high-profile hearings like this one are typically extra about representatives getting sound bites and digicam time than they’re about delving into regardless of the listening to is purportedly about. The TikTok CEO will doubtless face hostility from Republicans and Democrats alike, however he may additionally get an opportunity to place forth TikTok’s argument for why it’s not a nationwide safety risk and why its continued operation within the US is an efficient factor — or at the very least why it’s no worse than different social media platforms. Maybe, with the safeguards it’s spent greater than $1.5 billion setting up, Chew may even say TikTok is best. With a bipartisan invoice referred to as the RESTRICT Act, which might give Biden authorized authority to ban TikTok if it passes, now in play, it’s essential for the way forward for the platform that Chew and TikTok get this proper.

“We welcome the chance to set the report straight about TikTok, ByteDance, and the commitments we’re making to deal with considerations about US nationwide safety earlier than the Home Committee on Vitality and Commerce,” Brooke Oberwetter, a spokesperson for TikTok, mentioned in an announcement.

However the listening to may very well be extra necessary for the committee members that Chew is testifying earlier than. That is additionally their likelihood to make their case to the American folks that the threats TikTok poses are primarily based in actuality, moderately than simply chance. At this level, TikTok’s customers are very aware of what TikTok does and its relative deserves; it’s a vastly standard app that they have an inclination to spend so much of time on. However these customers doubtless know loads much less about why the app they like is supposedly dangerous and may go away, taking a supply of leisure, creativity, and even information together with it.

The considerations over TikTok’s hyperlinks to China are actual: China desires knowledge about People, and it’s pleased to make use of social media platforms to seed disinformation campaigns. In the meantime, a Chinese language regulation says companies should adjust to authorities orders. Even when ByteDance didn’t wish to give China TikTok person knowledge or push disinformation or propaganda by means of its advice algorithm, it wouldn’t have a alternative. However there’s no proof, at the very least not publicly, that this has ever occurred. And ByteDance has denied it ever has or would — not that which means a lot to the people who find themselves decided to imagine it did.

With these nationwide safety considerations in thoughts, the Committee on Overseas Investments in the US (CFIUS) started to research TikTok in 2020. Finally, the 2 events got here up with a draft settlement that would have glad everybody: There could be sufficient protections and third-party oversight to persuade the federal government that China couldn’t intrude with the app, whereas additionally permitting the app to remain within the US for the tens of tens of millions of people that use it and the companies that more and more depend on it. It was referred to as Undertaking Texas, and TikTok made it appear like the most effective of each worlds, however the Justice Division is believed to have refused to signal on to the deal and should nicely have killed it. (CFIUS, by means of the Treasury Division, declined to remark.)

That left the Biden administration to do what it reportedly did final week: demand that ByteDance unload TikTok or face a US ban. And for the People, all the higher if TikTok had been to discover a US proprietor, since that might assist keep US tech supremacy with none of the annoying potential nationwide safety points a China-owned TikTok introduced with it.

ByteDance divesting of TikTok shouldn’t be an ideal answer, but it surely appears to be the most effective final result so far as the US is anxious. The issue is that tidy little finish outcome will not be attainable.

Even when ByteDance did wish to unload TikTok — and the prospect of a US ban would render TikTok far much less helpful — it could not have the ability to. The Chinese language authorities, which put TikTok’s algorithm on a listing of restricted exports again in 2020, must approve TikTok’s sale. It could not wish to give the US a win right here, even when it means inflicting one in all its personal firms important hurt (China’s residents gained’t care if TikTok will get banned, because it’s not accessible there. As a substitute, they’ve a really related app referred to as Douyin). There’s additionally, after all, the chance that China wants TikTok to do the entire spying and propaganda pushing its detractors say it’s able to doing, which might make it wish to maintain on to that so long as attainable all of the extra. After which there’s the potential for retaliation.

“Any motion on TikTok is more likely to produce some response from China,” mentioned Lindsay Gorman, the senior fellow for rising applied sciences on the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “When the Trump administration tried to ban TikTok within the US again in 2020, China put out a brand new ‘Unreliable Entity Listing’ concentrating on US corporations, so we might see additions there, in addition to an aggressive diplomatic and propaganda push to color nationwide safety considerations as unfounded.”

So with no sale or mitigation plan, Biden has to both ban the app or do nothing. Doing nothing appears extremely unlikely at this level, with a number of states and the federal authorities banning TikTok on government-owned gadgets and the introduction of the RESTRICT Act, which might lay the authorized groundwork for a ban not simply of TikTok. The Biden administration issued an endorsement of that invoice moments after it was introduced, indicating that it’s on board with the thought of a ban or at the very least a viable strategy to situation one.

If Biden does nothing about TikTok, it could make him look weak within the face of a international adversary and nationwide safety risk. But when he bans it, there might be much more draw back. Banning TikTok hurts free speech; angers doubtlessly 150 million customers, a lot of whom can or will quickly have the ability to vote; units a doubtlessly harmful precedent; and, once more, dangers retaliation that would harm American companies.

For Biden, it could be excellent to have an actual purpose to do the ban, like arduous proof of a nationwide safety risk. As a substitute, there’s simply the potential of it we’ve seen bandied about up till now, sprinkled with just a few anecdotes that counsel it may be one thing extra. For instance, ByteDance admitted final yr that it accessed US journalists’ location knowledge whereas investigating an inside leak. That’s not fairly China spying on all of us, but it surely’s not an excellent look, both. And it’s one which the Justice Division reportedly seized on — all the higher to make the case in opposition to TikTok’s continued Chinese language possession.

If it really does come right down to a ban, James Andrew Lewis, director of the strategic applied sciences program on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, who has lengthy been skeptical of the nationwide safety risk posed by TikTok, thinks the Biden administration and TikTok will nonetheless discover a strategy to keep away from it.

“My wager is, you see some sort of ban introduced … adopted by some sort of mitigation deal when TikTok decides to just accept it,” Lewis mentioned. “That is all politics now.”

This lack of proof of TikTok doing precise, demonstrable hurt to the American folks is the true sticking level in the case of taking TikTok away from them. It at all times has been. What China might probably do with extra entry to their person knowledge may not be sufficient to persuade People who like TikTok that the app needs to be banned. (This risk additionally ignores the fact that loads of smartphone apps and web sites secretly gather knowledge about customers on a regular basis, in addition to experiences that a few of the identical state governments that banned TikTok on authorities gadgets additionally host its monitoring pixels on their very own websites.) Possibly this week’s listening to will assist make clear simply how large of a risk TikTok is. But when it doesn’t, Biden should select the lesser of two evils with out there being a consensus on what the lesser even is.

There’s a third means. For the entire considerations over China spying on and pumping disinformation at People by means of TikTok, the actual fact is that China doesn’t want TikTok to do this. China can and does purchase knowledge about People from knowledge brokers and hacks into varied companies and authorities techniques, a few of that are far richer sources of knowledge than TikTok is. China can be identified to run disinformation campaigns on American social media platforms, as do loads of different nations (together with the US). If the US authorities had been as involved about spying on-line because it claims to be, it could cross legal guidelines to stop it that apply to everybody.