TikTok sends push notifications to 170 million users in the U.S.

Compared with TikTok's patient explanations and communications in the face of suppression by the US government in the past few years, TikTok has recently taken actions that are very different from its previous style. On March 7, Eastern Time, T ikTok sent a pop-up notification in the application to a total of 170 million users in the United States, calling on them to call their members of Congress in their area and withdraw the divestiture bill against TikTok.

The content of the TikTok full-screen pop-up user is: Now is the time to speak up, "before the government deprives 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free speech", "This (bill) will deprive 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free speech, harm millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deprive artists of their audiences", "Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and let them vote against it."

According to some information obtained by Geek Park's investigation, TikTok's move was a decision made by the local team in the United States because the situation was more urgent this time and there was no way back. Compared with the executive order signed by then-President Trump in 2020, requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok's US business within 90 days, otherwise it would face a ban, this time the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act appears more urgent and direct.

Less than a day after TikTok popped up a window asking users for help, the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed a bill to divest TikTok, which is owned by Bytedance, with a vote of 50:0. The next process of the bill will be on March 11, when the House of Representatives will hold a quick vote on the proposal. The bill was submitted by 19 members of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 5.

The bill requires ByteDance to divest its short video app TikTok within 165 days, otherwise TikTok will face the fate of being removed from all U.S. app stores. The 12-page draft legislative proposal only contains the names of ByteDance and TikTok.

In addition, the bill to divest TikTok is only being advanced by the House of Representatives, and the Senate has not advanced it, and the process has been further accelerated. On the afternoon of March 8 local time, US President Biden said in an interview with foreign media, "If they pass it, I will sign it."

01

TikTok in the United States:

Frequent attacks, no way to retreat

In November 2019, the US government conducted a national security review of TikTok's parent company ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly, focusing on the processing and storage of user data. The "difficulties" began. Between November 2019 and July 2020, the US Senate held a series of hearings on the Chinese app TikTok, with the aim of promoting relevant legislation to ban the use of TikTok in the United States.

During this process, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed a bill in July 2020 that aims to ban federal government employees from using TikTok on government devices. Then in August, then-President Trump signed two executive orders. These orders are intended to restrict the download, update, and operation of TikTok in the United States, and require TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest its U.S. business within 90 days. The ban was not implemented immediately, but the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) subsequently initiated a national security review process for TikTok.

On June 9, 2021, the Biden administration issued a new executive order revoking the Trump-era ban on TikTok and WeChat. However, this does not mean that the regulation of these apps has been relaxed. In fact, the Biden administration maintained the review of these apps by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and proposed a series of restrictions on software applications developed by "foreign adversaries." The intensity of these measures is even greater than that of the Trump administration. TikTok has tried many efforts in the past to try to solve the problem.

In March 2020, Tiktok announced two important transparency initiatives to demonstrate the company's safety and trustworthiness: establishing a "Transparency and Accountability Center" to allow external visitors to view TikTok's content review background system, including some application code and data management operations. At the same time, TikTok also released a transparency report to disclose relevant information on its operations and data processing; established a content advisory committee composed of independent scholars and industry experts who provide advice and supervision to TikTok's operations team in the United States on content management, technical ethics, and data security.

In addition, TikTok has also established a dedicated US Data Security Company (USDS) to manage the data of US users. At the same time, TikTok has implemented a data isolation project called "Clover" and a data security project called "Texas", and the annual operating costs of both projects have reached approximately US$1 billion.

In May 2020, TikTok hired executives with American backgrounds, such as former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, as ByteDance's chief operating officer (COO) and TikTok's global CEO. In August 2020, TikTok filed a complaint with the United States District Court for the Central District of California, formally accusing the U.S. government of violating the law with its executive order issued on August 6 regarding the company and its parent company ByteDance.

In September 2020, ByteDance reached an agreement with Oracle, under which Oracle would become TikTok's "trusted technology provider" in the United States. According to the agreement, Oracle has the right to conduct security checks on TikTok's source code in the United States. In order to adapt to the US market and regulatory requirements, TikTok has taken a series of actions to localize data and improve transparency, and has been working hard to eliminate doubts.

Even beyond these actions, TikTok's e-commerce operations in the United States are also taking a localized route. As an international company, TikTok did not first provide a channel in the U.S. market for eager Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies based on money-making efficiency. In fact, for Chinese sellers, the entry conditions and thresholds for TikTok e-commerce are not low: first of all, a targeted invitation is required to settle in: TikTok Shop US site has opened a targeted invitation entry channel for cross-border merchants. This includes domestic entities and US entities of Chinese legal persons, and the mode of cooperation is the "merchant self-operation" model. Secondly, in terms of settlement requirements, Chinese sellers need to have a U.S. business license (Chinese hold more than 25% of the shares) and an EIN tax number, support local U.S. shipments, and have an annual GMV of more than 2 million U.S. dollars for a single store on other cross-border head platforms.

TikTok mainly focuses on supporting and promoting the development of the local business ecosystem in the United States. This approach has even caused dissatisfaction among some domestic companies for a period of time. But behind this choice is the consideration that TikTok e-commerce chooses to focus more on and localize the US market. Its goal is to become a truly international company that supports the development of the business ecosystem in every region, rather than a company incubated in China and aimed at helping Chinese business expand globally. Everything TikTok has done in the past is actually hoping that it can develop like a local company - localization of data, localization of teams, and localization of business ecology. But even if TikTok has worked hard to build a local system to support operations, judging from the results, as long as the parent company of TikToK is a Chinese company, these have not changed the US political environment's suppression of TikTok that completely ignores facts and justice.

02

Keep users informed:

Fight like a local company

The pop-up window called on users to call their congressmen to withdraw the bill, which was considered radical by Chinese audiences. After all, it seemed that such actions might raise questions about the influence of corporate influence on politics. But in fact, this was just TikTok adopting a resistance strategy similar to that of American companies in the face of challenges from the US government.

Because in the United States, many companies have called on users to take action in the past when facing legal challenges or policy changes. In 2012, during the discussion of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Preventing Economic Innovation and Intellectual Theft on the Internet Act), Reddit and other websites held a large-scale protest, including temporarily shutting down the website and calling on users to contact lawmakers to oppose these bills.

In the same year, Twitter users launched a campaign called "Twitter Blackout" to protest against SOPA and PIPA. Twitter encourages users to participate and speak out through social media platforms. In 2015, Uber collected signatures by sending emails and other means to mobilize users and drivers to express their opposition to the ban to local governments and legislatures. In 2016, when Airbnb faced strict short-term rental regulations in New York, the company encouraged users to contact local lawmakers through its platform to oppose laws that might restrict its services.

These companies’ actions are usually to protect their business models, user interests, or to oppose laws or policies that may affect their operations. By mobilizing users, they try to influence the legislative process to maintain their position in the market. In these struggles, the logic of the companies is that “these unreasonable laws and decisions will infringe on the rights of users, and we need to let users know and have the right to take action to protect their rights.”

This is not the same as companies using their influence to interfere in politics. It is just a legitimate struggle for fairness and justice in the business field, and it is in line with the American political system (at least in legal terms) - politics should be responsible for the interests of voters. Of course, no company has ever launched a nationwide protest campaign on the scale of TikTok to call on users.

According to information obtained by Geek Park, the decision to take this action was made by TikTok's local team, most likely because the introduction of the divestiture bill and its rapid progress indicate that TikTok's previous forms of resistance or compromise have been declared invalid, even after the US Congressional hearing on "National Security and Data Privacy" in March last year.

At this hearing, the inquiries mainly revolved around "privacy theft" and "data security". TikTok's CEO Zhou Shouzi went through more than 200 questions from the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee for more than 5 hours. He only had 6 minutes at the beginning to fully explain his position, and his responses were interrupted within 20 seconds for the rest of the time.

The inquiry was filled with some ridiculous questions, such as a congressman asked: Can TikTok access home WiFi networks? Zhou Shouzi answered: It will have to access the network to connect to the Internet. This hearing, which revealed too much unprofessional content, has strengthened the understanding of TikTok by more American users who care about TikTok, and also exposed the absurdity of the US court's groundless speculation and deduction about TikTok to the public.

At a hearing on child safety in early February this year, the absurdity was repeated. Halfway through the hearing, Senator Tom CoTikTokon (R-AR) repeatedly asked TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi to answer questions that were completely unrelated to the topic of the hearing that day - his identity. Now, an unfavorable situation has reappeared - not only threatening its normal operations and legal rights, but also having a real adverse impact on its user base. The most reasonable time for TikTok to decide to "inform users and encourage users to protect their rights" may be now.

On the one hand, the past two hearings have made its users fully understand the absurdity of the unfair doubts faced by TiKTok; at the same time, it is also a critical moment for TikTok to legally fight within the framework of American law. Because once the bill is passed by the Senate, it will officially become a legal bill in accordance with American law, and the situation will be more difficult to reverse. Before this day comes, when there is still some room for struggle in the American legal system, seemingly radical actions are also necessary means of self-defense, because compared to the question of whether TikTok is a Chinese company or an American company, it is a better answer that it has 170 million American users.

After all, when a company has no way out, TikTok has nothing to lose, and the worst outcome will not be worse than the split that will be led by the established law. It can be said that the TikTok team has done everything it can in terms of localization, and even mobilized user power to make legal protests like local companies.

However, in today's American political environment, we cannot expect too much from the direct effect of this action. But this is not the last moment either. It can be expected that TikTok will use its completely localized legal team to continue to defend itself in the American political and legal system in the most localized way.

Many times, resistance may not necessarily yield the best results, but resistance is also to leave a mark on the world. There is no doubt that TikTok has shouldered the pressure of an era, and it is also trying to give a meaningful answer to the era.

From Geek Park