Last April, the US Senate passed a bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell to a US company or face a nationwide ban. The Biden administration followed through when ByteDance refused to sell. On January 17th, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok starting on January 19 and TikTok went dark.
However, within a few hours of being taken off the App Store, TikTok was back with a message reading “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US!” After backroom negotiations with ByteDance, Trump implemented a 90 day extension for the selling of TikTok once he was inaugurated, valuing the app at $1 trillion dollars. In line with his “businessman” rhetoric, Trump boasted about a deal ensuring ByteDance would retain a 20% stake in operations while US capitalists would control the remaining 80%, along with TikTok’s US operations.
Potential buyers include Larry Ellison, the multibillionaire founder of Oracle and world’s fourth richest person, as well as Youtuber Mr. Beast, who is worth over $500 million and is known for using his obscene wealth to exploit working class people for content. Of course, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, co-chair of the new DOGE department, and owner of X is also a potential purchaser.
A deal was finalized on April 2nd, and Trump was expected to formally sign off on it in an executive order by the April 5th deadline. But as of April 4th, Trump has extended the “sell-or-ban” deadline by 75 days.
This extension comes right at the heels of the escalating tariff war, as Bytedance pulled out after Trump announced his additional 34% tariffs on China. The tariffs on China have since been raised to 145%, so ByteDance stated they would wait for negotiations regarding the tariffs. A successful deal to sell TikTok would have favored Trump. Now it’s fallen through due to what the US capitalists see as his aggressive and volatile economic brinksmanship of imposing irresponsibly high tariffs.
What is Behind the TikTok War?
In his first term, Trump ordered TikTok’s owners to sell the app to US capitalists as part of the war for technology dominance between US and Chinese imperialism. Democrats and Republicans alike got behind this idea under the cover of “national security,” as a broad section of the ruling class embraces decoupling with China and prepares for the possibility of war with US imperialism’s main rival. In reality, the threat to “national security” is in large part code for protecting the profit margins of the domestic ruling class. Should the forced sale of TikTok go through, US social media corporations would stand to gain massive market share and valuable technologies. While national security isn’t the primary interest at play here for the US capitalist class, this rhetoric shows how they are preparing for increased tensions and potential war.
Social media companies also function as an arm of the state’s surveillance apparatus. The US ruling class is desperate to have control over TikTok in order to monitor young people here and deprive the Chinese state of an opportunity to do so. One of the requirements of the now defunct deal states that the app’s US operations cannot coordinate with ByteDance on the app’s algorithm or data sharing practices, underscoring this point.
We have seen social media being used to identify protestors for the anti-war movement, and target individuals to kidnap and detain. Ultimately, our data is unsafe in the hands of any billionaire or capitalist government.
Billionaires Out of Social Media
Billionaires like Musk and Zuckerberg wield outsized political power through the control of their own social media networks, which they use to shape opinion, push right-wing extremism, and censor the left. Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, said that “freedom of the press” under capitalism really just means the freedom for it to be sold to the highest bidder. The benefits of technology to communicate and share experiences from all over the world cannot be fully realized under a capitalist system.
While social media is a tool for communication, organizing, and even uniting working-class movements across borders, the for-profit system it exists in creates toxic and damaging effects. The rise of religious fundamentalism, “return to tradition,” and homesteading accounts is accelerating a rightward shift amongst a significant section of young people, and legitimizing bigoted ideas. Addictive algorithms encourage doom-scrolling, pushing marginalized people to further demoralization, as the content being shoved down their throats highlights the endless crises of capitalism with no alternative offered.
Out of Doomscrolling and Into the Streets!
While the ruling class battles for our data in the inter-imperialist rivalry, we need to take political organizing from the screens to the streets, to our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. It is becoming rapidly clearer that social media cannot be our only form of organizing. Getting involved and active in your local Socialist Alternative branch is the best way to fight for a world where we do not feel the need to constantly doom scroll.
In a socialist world, media and art could be made for passion, enjoyment, and education. Social media should be a public utility that is owned and operated by the working class, with content created for and by us, without the manipulation of billionaires. But we also need a world without war, poverty, and climate disaster that forces working people to seek comfort in the shallow reprieve that much of social media provides. The uncertainty of which billionaire from which global imperialist power will own TikTok exists purely in the context of the rivalry between US and Chinese imperialism, and it’s the working class and young people who will pay the price until we overthrow the global capitalist system.