President Joe Biden, on Wednesday, signed into law a $95 billion national security package, which included a provision that could ban TikTok or force its sale. As that battle begins to play out, though, his campaign continues to use the social media service through the election.
TikTok isn’t going away anytime soon. The bill’s language ensures the ban couldn’t happen before the 2024 election—and TikTok has made it clear it plans to fight the measure in court, which is likely to be a protracted battle. And given the service has more than 170 million users in the U.S., including a large block of Generation Z, it’s a key way to reach young voters this year.
The platform was cited as being partially responsible for a larger-than-expected turnout of young voters in the 2022 midterm elections.
The Biden campaign did not reply to a query from Fast Company, but told other outlets it has no plans to leave TikTok anytime soon, despite the looming ban. “A fragmented media environment requires us to show up and meet voters where they are—and that includes online,” a spokesperson told NBC. “TikTok is one of many places we’re making sure our content is being seen by voters.”
The campaign does not have a link to its TikTok account on its official website, but it does steer visitors to its X, Facebook, and Instagram pages as well as its YouTube channel.
The Biden campaign initially vacillated on whether to use TikTok as part of its campaign plan, but joined the service in February and has built a follower base of more than 306,000 so far. (Donald Trump is not on TikTok, but has leveraged the debate, saying on his Truth Social account Monday that Biden would be “responsible for banning TikTok”, adding, “He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant.”)
Biden did not mention TikTok when signing the bill on Wednesday. Instead, he focused on the aid package for Ukraine, saying shipments would begin in the “next few hours.” In a call with China’s Xi Jinping earlier this month, though, he reportedly expressed concerns about the app’s Chinese ownership.
Somewhat predictably, the passage of the bill resulted in a flood of comments on Biden’s recent TikTok videos from angry users.
“You just guranteed [sic] Trumps win with the TikTok ban,” read the most popular comment on Biden’s most recent post.
“Keep TikTok and I’m voting for you,” another read. (“Keep TikTok” was the prevailing sentiment among users, a majority of which used that phrase.)
“You using TikTok but you wanna ban it 😂,” pointed out another user.
Under the new law, TikTok owner ByteDance has nine months to sell the app, or it will be banned in the U.S. The president has the ability to grant a 90-day extension if a sale is in the works but cannot close in that time period. Legal challenges will be the real time extension, though. The company is expected to fight the decision by Congress furiously.
“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” TikTok CEO Shou Chew declared in a video.
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