TikTok, Facing a US Ban, Is Also Waging Legal Battles Around the World

Russia fined TikTok for failing to remove prohibited content. Results of the presidential elections in the city Romania were rejected over concerns that the app was being used to spread foreign influence. Albania banned TikTok for a year after one teenager was killed by another teenager after they had an argument online.

“Either TikTok will protect the children of Albania, or Albania will protect its children from TikTok,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said on X.

This all happened just in the last month.

This week in the US, where about 150 million people use the app, TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are asking the Supreme Court to strike down a law that would force the app to be sold or banned.

TikTok has faced legal and political challenges around the world in recent years, facing full or partial bans in at least 20 countries as governments became alarmed by its ties to China and its widespread influence, especially among young people.

Despite the growing attention, TikTok remains incredibly popular around the world. More than a billion people use the app every month.

What’s new about TikTok is its proprietary algorithm, which recommends a constant stream of content, mostly short videos, calibrated to keep people scrolling. ByteDance pioneered the technology in 2016 with its spin-off app TikTok. Duinwhich has become one of the most popular apps in China and generates most of the company’s revenue. ByteDance knew it could be a hit overseas and launched TikTok in 2017.

But as TikTok’s algorithm has captured the world’s attention, it has alarmed lawmakers who say TikTok has quickly moved from the realm of cat videos and dance trends to a potentially disruptive social, political and economic force.

Officials from Montana to New Zealand have warned that TikTok could be used to incite violence, spread false information and worsen mental health. Lawmakers are also concerned that TikTok could share user data such as location and browsing history with the Chinese government. Young people must be protected from the “frightening pitfalls of the algorithm”, said Mr Rama, Albania’s prime minister.

TikTok insists the concerns are exaggerated. The company has teams dedicated to combating influence operations whose work it publishes, the company said in a statement. TikTok’s algorithm, which aims to “maintain content neutrality,” ranks content based on what users show interest in, the company said.

TikTok said ByteDance is majority owned by global investors. At the same time, the Chinese government asserted its authority to oppose any sale.

As other Chinese companies look to do more business overseas, TikTok has become both a model and a cautionary tale. The app showed that a new form of entertainment, first popularized in China, could spread to other countries. But it also opened the door to a backlash against Chinese apps like Temu and Shein.

“Every Chinese entrepreneur seems to need a degree in political science or international relations to be able to navigate their future now,” said Kevin Xu, the US founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in artificial intelligence technologies.

Other companies with global Internet products, such as Meta and Google, are also facing scrutiny around the world, said Jiangang Li, chief executive of consultancy Momentum Works in Singapore. “But as American companies, they don’t face the same mistrust that TikTok faced in the eyes of politicians and regulators in the West,” Mr. Lee said.

Here’s how governments dealt with TikTok.

Complete ban: India and Nepal.

A US ban could cut TikTok off from one of its most important markets. But TikTok has already experienced the loss of its largest audience at that time. Indian government the app was blocked in 2020 after India’s brewing geopolitical conflict with China escalated into hand-to-hand combat along their common border.

TikTok disappeared from app stores and its website was blocked, forcing creators who made a living from the app to rebuild their audiences on other platforms. Several domestic alternatives have emerged, but the biggest winners have been American tech giants. Both YouTube and Instagram now have about twice as many users in India as they do in the US.

Authorities in neighboring Nepal have temporarily disabled TikTok. almost a year The government called the refusal to restrict content incitement to hatred that violates “social harmony.” The ban was lifted in August after current Prime Minister Sharma Oli took charge for the fourth time.

Fines and forced local bindings: Russia and Indonesia

The Russian government has repeatedly fined TikTok for allowing the distribution of content that does not comply with the country’s censorship rules, including on topics such as sex, gender and feminism. The last two fines imposed by Russian courts over the past six months amounted to about $90,000.

In Indonesia, TikTok has launched online shopping, which it is banking on as a new source of revenue. In Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest country, the app has almost as many users as in the United States. But in 2023, the government passed a law that forced TikTok to shut down its online shopping business within days.

TikTok Shop was only able to reopen after it merged operations with Indonesia’s largest e-commerce companyTokopedia. For many store owners, rebuilding their audience has been slow, but for TikTok, the challenge came with a benefit: access to delivery driver network and logistics services designed to deliver packages across Indonesia’s 17,000 islands.

Blocked on government devices: Taiwan, UK, Canada and others.

Some governments have tried to balance concerns about TikTok’s security with freedom of expression.

Taiwan banned the app on government devices in 2019. But officials say they are not considering a complete ban because they don’t want to curb Taiwanese public debate culture. The UK, Australia and France, as well as the European Union executive and New Zealand parliament, have adopted the same approach.

TikTok has already been banned on government-issued mobile devices. Canada when the government ordered TikTok to close its offices in the country in November, citing national security risks posed by ByteDance.

In documents filed in a Canadian court last month to challenge the order, TikTok argued that the Canadian government had ordered it to delay processing overdue paperwork until the United States decided on its approach to the company.