On March 13, 2024, users of the popular social media platform, TikTok, discovered that the United States House of Representatives voted 362-65 to ban the app nationwide. The bill would disallow the use of the social media app within six months if the parent company refuses to sell the wholly-owned subsidiary to a company not based in China. On April 23, 2024, the Senate passed a legislative package that included the bill, which President Biden signed into law on Wednesday, April 24, 2024.
TikTok is currently owned by ByteDance, a parent company based out of Beijing, China. The United States government has cited concern over China’s ability to access private data from the social media app’s users or influence them through algorithms.
Proponents of the bill have expressed concern about communist access to information from hundreds of millions of Americans and using it as an assault on American democracy, according to ABC News. They fear that due to a lack of regulation, TikTok could be a threat to the privacy of its users within the United States.
While some people support the ban due to privacy reasons, others are concerned about what the loss of the app will mean for their social circles and online communities. Currently, TikTok has 170 million subscribers in the United States and is particularly popular with people under the age of 35, according to a study done by Statistica. The video format helps users feel connected with their favorite creators and allows communication to flow between creator and consumer more easily than on other social media platforms.
TikTok serves a variety of purposes for its consumers. Some creators push entertainment, others have built informative news channels, and some have even formed channels to discuss their life experiences with followers. Due to this, it’s easy for users to curate their experience and the type of content they consume on TikTok.
Dr. Matthew Salzano, a Researcher in Digital Culture, specializes in the history of online platforms. While observing the way social media platforms sort their users, he’s found that TikTok’s algorithm is unique in its efficiency for dividing users into groups. “The For You Page is so powerful. It decides something for you rather quickly and then gives you a bunch of super-curated information. Other platforms do that too […] but not to the same intensity of TikTok,” Salzano said.
As Dr. Salzano notes, the efficiency of the algorithm creates subcommunities easily. Hashtags such as “booktok,” “girltok,” “gaytiktok,” etc. have grown in popularity, forming subcultures of users across the platform. Trends also spawn easily with a shared collective, helping communities feel more connected. Some subcommunities have even developed slang and terms from the app, creating their own space.
This creation of subcommunities in an online space is nothing new for the LGBTQ+ community. “Queer communities have always been early adopters of the internet,” Salzano said, “they’ve been always finding ways to take advantage of these infrastructures that aren’t necessarily built for them to build subcommunities that can hopefully more safely express themselves.” From the early ages of the internet, marginalized communities have carved out spaces for themselves.
“These super specific cultural niches develop because TikTok is able to find them,” Dr. Salzano remarks. “[There’s] lesbians and then a subcommunity of lesbians and then a subcommunity of that subcommunity of lesbians,” which all have their own inner workings and specific culture. “In a way, it’s a sort of algorithmic, cultural sorting.”
Gloriana Lopez, Psychology PhD Candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has conducted extensive research on communities of color on social media. In her studies on young Latinx users on TikTok, she has found the algorithm to also be fundamental to the communities that form on the platform. “It’s been very unique […] the algorithm and how it connects people who share similar interests together and also what becomes popular on the platform,” Lopez said. “So some of the findings, specifically to Latinx LGBT youth, […] are that they are really using TikTok to find representation and role models. […] The algorithm has been really useful in them finding communities”
This also means that for communities that have been underrepresented in traditional media, a visual medium aids in building a collective identity. “I think that Tiktok, particularly, is good at allowing individuals to visualize themselves and really discern whether they belong to a certain community.” Lopez said. “And I think that for the Latinx LGBTQ communities, it’s been really useful in that community to figure out that aesthetic, what they want to look like, and how they want to be perceived.”
There have been threats to ban the app in previous years, and this one is causing panic among TikTok users, once again. According to a poll done by CNBC, 48% of respondents aged 18-34 oppose the ban. These users have made their opposition apparent. Currently, more than 500,000 posts on the social media app use the hashtags #KeepTikTok or #SaveTikTok, as reported by CNBC.
In a survey conducted by Veris Media Group LLC, young users are split on how the potential ban would affect them. Of respondents aged 18-24, 80% reported using TikTok regularly. Some users reported feeling that TikTok gives them access to a wider online community. “I feel like there is more access to queer people online than there is in person, sometimes,” one participant responded.
Lopez expressed the same concern when asked about the future of Latinx users online in the event of a TikTok ban. “It could really disrupt the knowledge and culture that is being created and circulated by people of color on the platform which is really being used by these communities to dignify and humanize their experiences. In this platform, they’ve been able to give their own counter to that stigma and discrimination.”
As the potential TikTok ban looms, the minority communities that have found solidarity, self-expression, and unity on the platform face an uncertain future. For users carving out spaces for their cultural identities, TikTok has become a lifeline of connectivity. The platform’s uncertain future underscores the need for online spaces that allow marginalized groups to continue an oral history and the ability to forge a communal identity.