National Review is joining TikTok. Given that we resisted this step for years consistent with our editorial stance that the social media platform should be outlawed, we owe it to you, our readers, to explain why.
Critics of TikTok have long made four arguments against the platform, all of which are especially heightened in the case of its many underage users: that it is effectively a spyware espionage tool for China; that Chinese control allows it to flood the United States with subversive propaganda; that it is chock-full of socially toxic content of all kinds; and that its design is addictive and deleterious to attention spans.
While these are all fair critiques, it is the first two — especially the concern about spying on Americans’ private information — that drove our editorial stance, justified bipartisan congressional action to divest Chinese ownership of the platform, and persuaded a unanimous Supreme Court to sustain that ban in spite of First Amendment objections. Social media platforms have free speech rights to disseminate many kinds of offensive content; they have no such right to spy on our citizens on behalf of a hostile foreign regime.
After much foot-dragging in brazen defiance of the law, Donald Trump has signed off on a deal that complies with its dictates. Disappointingly to those who wanted a clean break, China still has a significant ownership stake in the platform. ByteDance still owns 20 percent of the company (the maximum stake allowed by Congress) and still has a seat on the board, so it not only profits from TikTok operations but still has influence on the company’s direction. It still owns the TikTok algorithm, which the company leases. Having spent years designing TikTok and attracting some 170 million American users as it previously functioned, China has injected influences that will be hard to unravel.
For all of that, however, the deal makes changes of great consequence. The majority of the company’s ownership and board are now Americans — major figures in American business and technology, not Chinese Communist Party cutouts. Of overriding importance, the algorithm is now housed on servers in the United States, meaning that it is not subject to inspection of its data by the Chinese government. Day-to-day access to the algorithm is crucial because of how a social media algorithm works: Rather than being a static set of code, it continually collects user data in order to personalize each user’s experience as well as promoting content based at least in part on user feedback. Thus, physical control of the servers running the algorithm means control of that information. So long as the servers were in China, the Chinese government had both legal and practical power to see what was on them and direct what content they promoted and censored. That control is gone.
There remain anti-social aspects of TikTok. All social media platforms engage in a certain amount of spying on their users, all have some level of content moderation that can bleed into ideological censorship, and all are subject to government pressure, not just from Washington but from Brussels and other capitals. But with the removal of Chinese control, there is no longer a difference in kind between TikTok and platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, and YouTube.
Our founder, William F. Buckley Jr., once quipped that he wrote for Playboy “in order to communicate with my 16-year-old son.” Buckley being Buckley, his thinking didn’t stop with a witticism; he once returned a Christmas check from the company for being “a member of the Playboy family” and suggested that Hugh Hefner’s company give it instead to some organization “engaged in comstockery.” But just as WFB recognized the need to bring his message to many different media platforms, even those he found distasteful or hostile, we believe that there is a role for National Review to present its ideas where they are most lacking.