TikTok Ban Enforced by Supreme Court; What Happens Now? Timely Insights from Michigan Ross Professor Justin Huang

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, many questions remain regarding user advocacy, data privacy policy, trust in U.S.-based social media platforms, and more. Huang shares some insights on the TikTok ban in the following Q&A. 

Since the U.S. House of Representatives voted to ban TikTok in March of last year, there has been a significant outpouring of advocacy for TikTok from U.S. users. What makes TikTok a unique platform, and why might users fervently support it in the face of these policy and legal decisions?

Through its prized algorithm, TikTok demonstrated itself to be better than competing platforms at discovering and popularizing new creators and trends. As a result, millions of small creators and businesses forged connections with billions of followers. It will be very difficult for these networks to migrate in the face of this ban, and for many, the tangible social and economic shocks will outweigh the nebulous potential benefits from data and national security.

TikTok has nearly 150 million U.S. users; what social media apps might replace it? Do you expect any unintended consequences of user migration to other apps?

Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are the two closest competing platforms. Both have large user bases, offer short-form videos, and were modeled after TikTok. However, this past week, we have seen a sudden and expected migration of TikTok users to another Chinese-owned app, RedNote. Migrating users justified the move as a protest against Meta and the U.S. government. The development has facilitated a unique and rapid cultural exchange between English-speaking and Chinese users while raising alarms in Washington and Beijing.

The TikTok ban addresses concerns over user data access. Are there differences between user data collection on TikTok and other popular social media platforms such as Instagram or X (formerly Twitter)? What data security issues might be left to address with U.S.-based social media platforms?

The actual types of data collected by TikTok versus its competing social networks are largely the same, with the key difference that Chinese national security law could require TikTok to share data with the Chinese government. While the TikTok ban legislation addresses this specific risk, broader protections for American data security are quite weak. One major risk is the lack of protections for location data, which can easily identify an individual and reveal sensitive personal information such as medical visits. These data are regularly collected by mobile phone applications and sold to advertisers and data brokers.

Beyond data access, many TikTok users perceive the ban as an attempt to restrict free speech or political discourse. Given your previous research, how might the TikTok ban affect consumer expectations of social media platforms and their content moderation policies?  

One trend I observe from my research is that users want others’ content to be moderated, not their own. The TikTok ban and broader moderation policy changes on X and Meta have thrust content moderation and potential political bias inherent in these policies into the spotlight. I predict that platforms will increasingly use content moderation policies to appeal to their targeted user segments, and new platforms will emerge that highlight content moderation as a key point of differentiation.