Tag: politics

By Tristan Smith

Over the course of 2020, a new wave of controversy has arisen over the use of the popular social media app TikTok across the world and specifically here in the United States. The application allows users to create original content such as music, lip-sync, dances, and general narratives.[1] The application has grown immensely in popularity in the United States, reporting a growth rate of nearly 800% since January 2018 with nearly 100 million monthly users.[2] Globally, the app has been downloaded about 2 billion times.[3] However, with this increased popularity has also come a renewed and heightened scrutiny of the foreign-owned app by U.S. officials as well as other players in the private sector.[4] As far back as 2018, government officials in the United States were raising concerns about the Chinese-owned app, and in response to its growing popularity, Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), which expanded the scope and investigatory powers of the United States Committee on Foreign Investment to allow for the committee to launch investigations into foreign corporations with a large financial presence in the United States.[5]

TikTok has also found itself embroiled in political controversies here in the United States. In the summer of 2020, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and an economic crisis across the United States, President Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign announced an in-person rally for supporters of the President in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[6] Although the Trump campaign boasted that over one million tickets had been requested, a mere 6,200 tickets were actually scanned at the rally.[7] In the immediate aftermath of the lackluster rally, TikTok users claimed to have registered hundreds of thousands of tickets for the event as a prank without event planners being aware of the truth behind the registrations.[8]

In the wake of the growing controversy surrounding TikTok, the Trump administration has sought to encourage TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell either the entire company or at least a majority stake to American buyers.[9] ByteDance LtD, the Beijing company that owns TikTok, originally began discussions with Oracle Corporation to purchase a large portion of the company; however, the original proposed partnership fell short of the desires of President Trump and Senate Republicans who were seeking to see a U.S. company retain at least a majority stake in TikTok in order for the app to continue to be available for download in the United States.[10]

The backlash on the Trump Administration’s threats against TikTok has been swift from users of the social media platform.[11] Users have developed a sense of community and view the app as an outlet for creativity and expression, specifically during the wake of COVID.[12] As one user put it, “If TikTok did shut down, it would be like losing a bunch of really close friends I made, losing all the progress and work I did to get a big following.”[13]

[1] See generally Top 10 TikTok App Tips and Tricks, Guiding Tech (Oct. 2, 2018), https://www.guidingtech.com/top-tiktok-musically-app-tips-tricks/

[2] Alex Sherman, TikTok Reveals Detailed User Numbers for the First Time, CNBC (Aug. 24, 2020, 6:33 PM), https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/24/tiktok-reveals-us-global-user-growth-numbers-for-first-time.html.

[3] Id.

[4] Taylor Lorenz, What if the U.S. Bans TikTok?, The New York Times (July 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/style/tiktok-ban-us-users-influencers-taylor-lorenz.html (last updated Aug. 3, 2020); see also Mike Isaac and Karen Weise, Amazon Backtracks From Demand That Employees Delete TikTok, The New York Times (July 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/technology/tiktok-amazon-security-risk.html (explaining that less than five hours after Amazon sent an email to its employees asking them to delete TikTok citing security risks, the company reversed course).

[5] Hannah Weiss, Who’s Afraid of TikTok?, Wake Forest Journal of Business & Intellectual Property Blog (Mar. 29, 2020), http://ipjournal.law.wfu.edu/2020/03/whos-afraid-of-tiktok/(explaining the expanded powers of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States under FIRRMA include the expansion of its jurisdiction and increased reporting requirements on the part of foreign companies).

[6] Taylor Lorenz, TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally, The New York Times (June 21, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html (last updated Sept. 14, 2020).

[7] Id.

[8] Id.

[9] Trump Administration Pushes for U.S. Control of TikTok, The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-pushes-for-u-s-control-of-tiktok-11600295711 (updated Sept. 16, 2020).

[10] Id. (“Asked about ByteDance maintaining a majority stake in TikTok, Mr. Trump said, “Conceptually, I can tell you, I don’t like that.””).

[11] Lorenz, supra note 4.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

Image Source: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/12/hawley-bill-tiktok-china/

How Social Media is Playing a Role in the Upcoming Presidential Election

By JOLT

On September 27, 2020

In Blog Posts

By: Joleen Traynor

With the presidential election fast approaching, voters and pundits alike are increasingly concerned about the integrity of our election systems. Outside groups have attempted to infiltrate our election systems in the 2016 election cycle[1], and the United States could be at risk again in the 2020 cycle. This concern grows by the day as we near election day. This comes after Microsoft recently issued a warning outlining a number of foreign governments, including Russia, China and Iran, that have attempted to access secure campaign data from both President Trump and Joe Biden’s campaigns.[2] Social media also has an increasing role to play in election security, and in ensuring that only verifiable, accurate information is presented to the public. However, exactly how this information is presented to the public is up for debate, and each platform is taking its own approach to how it plans to treat unverifiable information.

This begs the question: what role does social media have to play in securing our election system? Foreign adversaries often rely on artificial intelligence, often referred to as “bots” to disseminate misleading or false information online. A “bot” is “a computer that attempts to talk to humans through technology that was designed for humans to talk to humans.”[3] In fact, “researchers determined that bots accounted for roughly 25 percent of tweets concerning the 2016 presidential election.”[4]

Some platforms, like Twitter, are attempting to balance access to information, and ensuring that the information that is circulated is legitimate, seen in Twitter’s policy of suspending certain accounts for inappropriate behavior, in many instances these suspended accounts are “bots”, and are not actual people sharing links and information.[5] Another social media platform, Facebook, overhauled its advertising policy after the 2016 election.[6] Looking ahead, “Twitter said it plans to more aggressively label or remove election-related tweets that include disputed or misleading information, while Google said it would screen more auto-complete suggestions to avoid voters being misled.”[7] Are these actions sufficient?

Regarding the 2020 presidential election cycle, substantive steps are already being taken to appropriately label posts and information given by President Trump’s campaign team. Both Twitter and Facebook have issued warning labels for tweets and posts from President Trump’s official channels, however the posts have not been removed.[8] These actions provide a warning to followers and readers that the posts may contain inaccurate information, and it may encourage readers to independently verify information for themselves. These are valid and important steps that social media platforms are taking in order to better inform the public, but is it enough to stop unverifiable information and false news from spreading online? These are questions that can only be answered in the days and weeks after election day.

[1] See generally 2016 Presidential Campaign Hacking Fast Facts, CNN (Oct. 31, 2019, 1:10 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/us/2016-presidential-campaign-hacking-fast-facts/index.html.

[2] David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, Russian Intelligence Hackers Are Back, Microsoft Warns, Aiming at Officials of Both Parties, N.Y. Times (Sept. 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/us/politics/russian-hacking-microsoft-biden-trump.html.

[3] Siobhan Roberts, Who’s a Bot? Who’s Not?, N.Y. Times (June 16, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/science/social-media-bots-kazemi.html.

[4] Ashley Fox, Automated Political Speech: Regulating Social Media Bots in the Political Sphere, 18 First Amend. L. Rev. 114, 117 (2020).

[5] Brice C. Barnard, The Tweet Stops Here: How Politicians Must Address Emerging Freedom of Speech Issues in Social Media, 88 UMKC L. Rev. 1019, 1033 (2020).

[6] Alex Rochefort, Regulating Social Media Platforms: A Comparative Policy Analysis, 25 Comm. L. & Pol’y 225, 237 (2020).

[7] Emily Glazer and Kirsten Grind, Google and Twitter Sharpen Tools to Stop False Claims About Election, Wall St. J. (Sept. 10, 2020, 4:11 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-to-label-remove-more-election-related-tweets-with-misleading-information-11599757200?mod=tech_lead_pos7.

[8] Brian Fung and Paul P. Murphy, Facebook and Twitter put warning label on Trump’s posts on voting twice, CNN (Sept. 12, 2020, 2:39 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/12/politics/twitter-facebook-trump-north-carolina/index.html.

Image Source: https://www.texomashomepage.com/news/national-news/social-media-giants-testified-on-capitol-hill-addressing-their-role-in-online-extremism/

Tag: politics

Tik Tok on The Clock: An Overview of the Controversy Surrounding Gen Z’s Favorite App

How Social Media is Playing a Role in the Upcoming Presidential Election