Americans Secretly Agree about Why They'd Want to Ban Social Media Apps
New study suggests there could be a silent majority in support of the TikTok ban
As promised, The Monitor is still on break from regular publication until February. Also as promised, however, some things just can’t wait that long.
Ka Zeng (Political Science, UMass Amherst), Damian Raess (Social Sciences, Université Laval), and (Political Science, Georgetown University - Qatar) have just released a working paper on what factors increase American support for banning apps. We are very happy that they’ve asked us to publish their executive summary announcing the release of this paper and its main findings.
Stay tuned in the next few days as we also publish an interview with Fuchsia Dunlop on her book Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food (available in paperback in the United States on January 21). Political fatigue, at least in America, is obvious now and will likely get worse. We thought we’d offer a break to talk about what matters most in life - FOOD!
- Nick
Americans Secretly Agree about Why They'd Want to Ban Social Media Apps
This week, the fate of TikTok, a popular social media app owned by the internet technology company ByteDance headquartered in Beijing, has captured the attention of millions of Americans. In a much-awaited decision, the Supreme Court just ruled to uphold a law requiring the app’s U.S. operations to be sold to American owners–or have the app shut down in the United States. With the Biden administration choosing not to enforce the law ahead of inauguration, TikTok’s future now lies in the hands of the President-elect Donald Trump, who has signaled a willingness to offer the app a lifeline.
The law requiring divestment of TikTok was passed last year by bipartisan majorities. One might assume that the Hill’s strong support for the bill reflects broad public backing. Yet the public opinion is seemingly divided. A report by the Pew Research Center finds only 28 percent of Americans oppose a ban of TikTok outright, just 32 percent now favor a ban while a plurality –39 percent–say they’re not sure. Such mixed public attitudes reflect both the threats and opportunities presented by social media apps to the domestic society. On the one hand, they facilitate the sharing of content (information, ideas, photos, videos) at low cost and provide valuable tools for social interactions, freedom of expression, and commerce. On the other hand, critics allege that they raise many potential risks related to topics such as national security, industrial espionage, disinformation, data privacy, and public health.
We wanted to understand public opinion toward regulating foreign social media apps at a deeper level. What are the factors that make Americans want to ban–or oppose banning–foreign social media apps? To explore this question, we fielded an online survey of American adults. We found an astonishing degree of consensus about what factors make Americans support banning an app–and our findings suggest that TikTok (or, at least, the way the app has been portrayed) was practically designed in a lab to be mistrusted by Americans.
To reach our conclusions, we used a technique that allows us to present respondents with many different randomized characteristics of hypothetical apps. By randomizing a large number of traits of an app, like whether it is based in a democracy or a dictatorship and whether it targets young adults or all Americans, we could establish which characteristics of a foreign-owned app made respondents more or less receptive to banning it.
Our findings, available as a working paper, were clear. Respondents worried most about whether an app posed a threat to the military and intelligence agencies. Respondents favored banning an app described as posing a “high” threat to national security by about 25 percentage points more than one described as posing a “low” threat. Even a “moderate” threat attracted 10.5 percentage points more support for a ban than a low-threat app.
The preponderance of security concerns among the public mirrors those expressed by legislators from both sides of the aisle. For example, Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) has voiced concern about TikTok’s ability to “manipulate… the population of the United States, especially in time of a conflict.” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) opined that “TikTok is a gun aimed at American’s heads,” warning that China is “weaponizing” the information it has surreptitiously collected from millions of Americans and “aiming that information… at the core of American democracy.” Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) described TikTok as “a grave national security threat to Americans” and a threat to the privacy and security of the American citizens.
Respondents also worried about the relations between the app and its home government. Respondents were about nine percentage points less likely to support banning a privately owned app that was independent of its government compared to one owned by the government or privately owned but connected to the ruling regime. They similarly favored banning an app based in an authoritarian country by over five percentage points more than one based in a democracy.
Still more important was whether the app was based in a country whose government allowed U.S. apps to operate in its market. For example, American apps such as Facebook, Substack, and X are all banned in China. Respondents were 12 percentage points less likely to support a ban for an app if its home country market allowed U.S. apps to operate there.
Unusually, these findings generally held across a number of different audiences–women and men, the old and the young, white and non-white: pretty much all worried about national security, government type, reciprocal market access, and ownership independence. There were a few small differences–Republicans cared less whether the app’s government was democratic than Democrats or independents–but not large ones.
Even TikTok users largely resemble non-users–although they were notably less likely to support banning an app based on whether its owner was independent of the government or not. (We also found that app policies like moderating misinformation and protecting users’ privacy mattered, but not as much as reciprocal market access or national security.)
TikTok, of course, scores poorly on all of the important factors we identify. Although privately owned, it has been described as having close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. It has long been banned from military devices because of its security risk potential. And, of course, China’s government is authoritarian.
Our work suggests that Americans’ support for banning an app that resembles many prominent depictions of TikTok may be more solid than it appears. To be sure, it’s easy to say that one supports banning TikTok, and another thing to live without addictive videos curated by a seemingly omniscient algorithm. But then again, as the bill’s author, former Republican congressman Mike Gallagher wrote in the Wall Street Journal, the bill really does only require that ByteDance divest the app–a much easier pill to swallow.
For us, though, the most important implication of our findings isn’t about the immediate dispute. Rather, it’s that there’s a potentially large constituency for blocking foreign social media apps perceived as threatening. That’s a huge reversal from the dream of the 1990s, when many idealists extolled a vision in which a global Internet would facilitate international communication and even peace. It’s also a change from the 2010s, when many believed that Facebook and Twitter could help topple authoritarian governments.
Now, it seems, Americans are willing to contemplate cutting off Internet access–partly to force others’ markets open but partly because the app store is seen as a threat vector. Even if TikTok survives, those sentiments will persist. One day, they’ll likely be acted on.
Ka Zeng is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherest. Her research focuses on China’s role in the global economy, in particular Chinese trade policy, China’s behavior in global economic governance, and China-related trade dispute dynamics. Dr. Zeng is the author or co-author of Trade Threats, Trade Wars (Michigan, 2004), Greening China (Michigan, 2011) and Fragmenting Globalization(Michigan, 2021).
Damian Raess is is a professor at the École supérieure en études internationales (ESEI), Université Laval, and the holder of the research chair Couche-Tard on global value chains. His research interests include, but are not limited to, the private and public governance of labour standards through international trade.
Paul Musgrave is Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University in Qatar. His research interests lie in the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and international relations theory. Professor Musgrave’s work also examines the relationship of global energy markets to domestic and international politics.
The views expressed in this article represent those of the author(s) and not those of The Carter Center.
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