As Congress starts the clock on a ban, the app must consider its options
and you can hear the influencers wail. On March 13th America’s House of Representatives passed a bill barring app stores and internet providers from distributing “foreign-adversary-controlled applications”. The target is clear: TikTok, a hit short-video app to which 170m Americans are glued for an average of 56 minutes a day.. Although the firm is based in Los Angeles and Singapore, it is a subsidiary of ByteDance, a Chinese tech outfit.
But before President Joe Biden can sign the bill into law, which he says he will do, it must first pass the Senate. Given its bipartisan popularity you might think this was a formality. Not so. Donald Trump, who as president almost forced TikTok into a sale in 2020, has changed his tune.
Were advertisers forced to shift their spending from TikTok, America’s homegrown social-media companies would be in for a windfall. Not all will benefit equally. According to Kepios, a research firm, 82% of global TikTokers use Facebook, 80% scroll Instagram and 78% watch YouTube, which is owned by Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet . Only 53% use X, the debating forum formerly known as Twitter, and a mere 35% are on Snapchat, a messaging app.
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