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text | Power Factory, author | Zhang Yongyi, editor | Gao Yulei
On March 7, American tiktok users opened the app as usual, and were suddenly "scared" by a full-screen pop-up window: an email that seemed to be a threat, but the subject The open letter "Prevent the closure of TikTok" was pushed to users - calling on them to speak out and defend TikTok.
This measure quickly set off a heated discussion on major social platforms: in addition to actually calling the congressmen to bombard them, more users chose to rush to social media to ask "what happened", and then they knew this The cause of the incident.
On March 5, 19 members of the House of Representatives submitted a bill to spin off TikTok from ByteDance. The challenge requires ByteDance to spin off TikTok within six months, otherwise it will face coercion in all U.S. app stores. If it is removed from the shelves, US Internet service providers will not be able to provide services for tiktok.
Power Plant has sorted out several questions that have attracted the most attention from the outside world in this incident, and tried to find answers from the facts: How have American users reacted in the past few days? In addition to encouraging users, what kind of self-rescue plan does TikTok have? And why did Trump, Musk and others suddenly become supporters of tiktok?
Bill Timeline
The full name of this aggressive offensive is the "Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act." ” control application. At the same time, the bill would give the US president new powers to designate applications that may pose a national security risk and be subject to a ban unless ownership is divested. This means that in addition to tiktok, the overseas version of WeChat, temu, and shein all fall under the jurisdiction of this bill.
The bill also further clarifies many previously vague details: such as which companies will be considered data operators and what data is considered "sensitive data."
A press release issued after the bill was released also provides more information: This bill prevents ByteDance-controlled applications from obtaining app stores or web hosting services in the United States, unless the application is cut with Bytedance. contact. It also states that "the bill provides ByteDance with a divestment time window. If conditional divestment is completed, the ban does not apply."
But the statement by Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives' Special Committee on China, may be simpler and more intuitive: "The number one adversary of the United States should not control a dominant media platform in the United States."
During the epidemic, the U.S. government He has also used tiktok as the main promotional platform many times, and invited Anthony Fauci to popularize science among netizens. Since then, tiktok has gradually evolved into a common channel for publicity in American politics. Even after some bills are released, the White House will hold a small communication meeting for TikTok creators, encouraging these creators to publish videos to convey the impact of the new bills to young audiences.
In mid-February, Biden himself appeared on the scene to record a tiktok video, in which he answered questions from netizens and interacted, trying to attract tiktok users to vote.
In terms of various practical actions, the US government does not intend to "completely kill TikTok" as the highest priority goal. Instead, it strives to completely separate the TikTok business from the Bytedance system, so as to best serve the interests of the United States as a whole. , lowering the vigilance of ordinary Americans about this matter, giving the public the illusion that "this is just another spin-off/merger by a technology giant" and will not affect the actual use of daily users.
This is the direct reason why this bill did not receive enough attention at the beginning, until tiktok resorted to an "off-the-shelf trick": through open-screen advertisements, it mobilized all tiktok users in the United States and called on them to call congressmen in their local constituencies. The phone sounds.
Since the young generation in the United States are generally too lazy to care about politics and don’t even know who the members of their constituencies are, TikTok has thoughtfully added a “one-click direct access” feature: after pressing the iconic TikTok red button on the screen, the app will automatically The phone number of the congressman in your current constituency is displayed, and the user can dial directly to the corresponding congressman's office with one click.
Although this measure may seem like a fight between trapped beasts, such "mobilizing the masses" to put pressure on the U.S. government is not without precedent in the history of the U.S. Internet: whether it is a full-screen pop-up prompt or calling on users to Calls made by members of this constituency have been used by many American Internet companies before, but this method is still too sensitive for TikTok, which has been deeply involved in the political struggle between the two major countries.
For tiktok, this is already a measure that cannot be used until the last moment.
Creators and users are gradually becoming numb
After the full-screen advertising incident, even based on the view of "electronic opium", many people on social media applauded the complete ban on tiktok, but the silent majority is still difficult for everyone Ignored fact-Tiktok is still one of the most popular social platforms among young people in the United States.
TikTok has tried the "upper-level route" before. In May 2023, it used a bus to bring 24 TikTok big Vs to Capitol Hill to "check in", in order to make more TikTok users aware of the current situation faced by the platform.
In the past few years, ordinary TikTok users have gradually lost interest in the long-term abnormal business competition. However, the situation of TikTok has not improved, and the creators who have caught wind of the trend are gradually losing.
Duncan Joseph, who once flew to Washington to support TikTok and has more than 4.5 million fans on TikTok, once told reporters: "This is our home... No one can take this social structure away from so many people. Walk". But now, he has also become accustomed to publishing his works on multiple platforms at the same time, and calls on users to pay attention to his other platforms instead of just his tiktok account.
tiktok also recognized a cruel reality: after India completely banned tiktok, users were quickly absorbed by instagram and youtube. Users don’t have much “must-tiktok” sentiment on this matter.
However, the long-term usage habits are still difficult to shake. At this time, the silent majority finally realized that the territory they were familiar with had been eroded to the point of no retreat. It is precisely because of this that after TikTok used full-screen advertisements to "save itself" and the phone calls to the U.S. Congress were bombarded by angry American young people, the outside world really saw clearly the appeal of TikTok in the local cultural community for the first time - but This is exactly what the US government does not want to see.
Self-help tiktok
tiktok was not completely unprepared for this ban: on the contrary, in the past five years, since the Trump administration, TikTok has taken various preventive measures around the potential risk of a comprehensive ban, including establishing a team Highly professional and mature local PR team.
Today, TikTok’s U.S. data management adopts a model similar to Apple’s “Guizhou on the Cloud” model: local U.S. data is stored in Oracle’s servers, and TikTok employees do not have direct access to this data. They can only access this data through a company called TikTok Us Data Security. Only current contractor employees have access to this data.
According to Zhou Shouzi, employees working in this company have undergone strict audits to ensure that the possibility of local data leakage in the United States is minimized. At the same time, TikTok’s efforts in the past few years have also included establishing a Transparency and Accountability Center in Los Angeles, USA, and investing heavily in public relations, trying to operate and package itself in the same way as Google and Apple.
But this does not mean that ByteDance is ready to spin off TikTok. According to the view of a Singaporean TikTok employee who was interviewed by a reporter from "The Power Plant", for ByteDance, regardless of whether TikTok's US business will be spun off, the best result is to keep TikTok intact within the Bytedance architecture. Next——Because American users are really making too much money.
’s high-value American user base is a holy grail for any Internet company that is unmatched by other markets: TikTok has now become the most commercially valuable platform in the United States, and millions of creative works have been built on it. ecology, and its growth momentum continues unabated.
As of 2023, American adults will spend 4.43 billion minutes on TikTok every day, and more than two-thirds of American teenagers will open TikTok every day. TikTok has become the main window for these teenagers to understand the world, so full-screen pop-ups have a psychological impact on them like an air raid siren.
Just as TikTok/Little Red Book have had a great impact on search engines such as Baidu in China, more than 40% of Americans now use TikTok as a search engine every day, and 43% of users use it as a search engine. as your primary news source. Abandoning such a gold mine will not only be a major blow to TikTok, but will also have a considerable impact on ByteDance Group's other businesses.
Generation Z users who shop on TikTok are 1.8 times more likely to make purchases based on recommendation algorithms than in traditional markets
In TikTok’s official statement, it has been repeatedly emphasized that “this legislation will trample on the rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 500 A platform for thousands of small businesses to develop and create jobs." But these are no longer the top priorities for the U.S. government and the Senate and the Senate, which have made up their minds and eliminated the differences within the two parties.
At this time, TikTok’s off-the-shelf strategy has become the most lethal weapon: the above-mentioned TikTok’s open-screen advertisement for users across the United States is the creative idea of the local public relations team in the United States.
’s move may have miraculous effects: Under the current situation in an election year, if enough pressure can be put on members and a clear enough voice can be conveyed, the bill will be voted on by the House of Representatives as soon as March 13, Eastern Time , will also encounter huge resistance.
"Support" from Trump and Musk
After the bill was released, political forces from all parties began to perform on stage. Among them, Trump's performance was the most puzzling: Trump made a 180-degree public stance in an interview with cnbc He turned around and said he did not support tiktok and was banned.
"This is an application that many young people like. Without it, many young people would go crazy," Trump said in a TV interview.
In fact, Trump himself is the most direct driver of the ban on TikTok in the United States: When Trump was in office, he signed an executive order prohibiting American citizens and companies from transactions with TikTok, and at the same time forced ByteDance to spin off TikTok. .
Image source: getting image
Shortly after Biden came to power, these Trump's decrees were canceled one by one by the US courts and Biden. This once made the outside world believe that TikTok's lobbying against the US government had taken effect and had passed the most difficult time. a level.
But Trump’s ambiguous statement at this time is more because Trump himself has always been good at using social media to build momentum. At the same time, he also suffered the pain of being collectively banned by social media during the election. An uncontrollable tiktok is obviously more difficult for him. Advantages: Trump said the truth on his "home court" truth social, "If you get rid of TikTok", Facebook's business will double. And he doesn’t want Facebook to “do better.”
Even if Trump himself still believes that TikTok is a "national security threat," there are many content that imitates Trump on TikTok today, and the overall content trend also tends to be conservative. These contents are conducive to the Trump team's dissemination of his policies. The concept is to turn users into their own ticket warehouses.
Although Trump’s relationship with tiktok is more because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, his attitude has indeed affected the positions of many Republican senators, changing from firm support for divesting tiktok to a swing state.
In addition, Musk, who has always been politically conservative, also expressed his opposition to the TikTok ban bill. The reason is also very simple: he believes that the definition of this bill seems to be clearer, but in fact it is equivalent to "loosening" the US government. The administrative methods and ruling methods are even more ambiguous - the relevant vocabulary used in the bill is not limited to Chinese capital, but any "website" or "application" is applicable to this bill.
is a done deal?
There are various signs that this bill against TikTok has no differences between the two parties. It was passed by the House of Representatives and the White House and will not encounter much resistance. A complete ban after half a year seems to be close at hand; and TikTok is now also We are indeed launching self-rescue operations based on the worst assumptions.
But this does not mean that TikTok has no chance of winning: On November 30 last year, a U.S. district judge successfully blocked a state-wide ban on the use of TikTok in Montana after TikTok appealed on the grounds that it violated Users’ rights to free speech, and unconstitutional in multiple respects, override the rights held by state governments.
Even if TikTok is eventually forced to spin off or be sold as a whole, TikTok, as a pioneer, has not ended the e-commerce/short video era in North America: with the rise of TikTok, domestic overseas software services such as temu and capcut have also entered the market and become It has been chosen by mainstream American users and has achieved great success in its own field that is different from TikTok. Of course, these are another story.
Now, TikTok still has room to struggle, but there is not much time left for ByteDance.
