TikTok faces legal restrictions around the world

Russia fined TikTok for not removing banned content. In Romania, the results of the presidential election were annulled on the grounds that the application was used to spread foreign influence. Albania has banned TikTok for a year following the death of a teenager at the hands of another after the two argued online.

“Either TikTok protects Albania’s children, or Albania will protect its children from TikTok,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said on X.

All this just in the last month.

This week in the United States, where about 150 million people use the app, TikTok and its Chinese company ByteDance are asking the Supreme Court to strike down a law that would force the app to be sold or banned.

In recent years, TikTok has faced legal and political scrutiny around the world, with full or partial bans in at least 20 countries as governments worried about its ties to China and its widespread influence, especially among young people.

Despite increased scrutiny, TikTok remains incredibly popular around the world. More than 1 billion people use the app every month.

What’s new about TikTok is its proprietary algorithm, which recommends a constant stream of content, mostly short videos, calibrated to make people scrolling (sliding the screen). ByteDance pioneered the technology in 2016 with TikTok subsidiary Douyin, which has become one of the most popular apps in China and generates most of the company’s revenue. ByteDance knew it could be a hit overseas and launched TikTok in 2017.

But as TikTok’s algorithm gained worldwide attention, it alarmed lawmakers, who say TikTok has quickly morphed from the realm of cat videos and dance trends into a potentially disruptive social, political and economic force.

Authorities from Montana to New Zealand have warned that TikTok can be used to incite violence, spread false information and harm mental health. Lawmakers are also concerned that TikTok may be sharing user data, such as location and browsing history, with the Chinese government. Young people must be protected from the “terrible traps of the algorithm”, Albanian Prime Minister Rama said.

TikTok insists the fears are overblown. The company has anti-influence operations teams whose work it publishes, the company said in a statement. TikTok’s algorithm, which aims to “maintain content neutrality,” ranks content based on what users express interest in, the company said.

TikTok said the majority of ByteDance’s companies are owned by international investors. At the same time, the Chinese government has declared its authority to oppose the sale.

As other Chinese companies try to do more business overseas, TikTok has become both an example and a warning. The app showed that a new form of entertainment, first popularized in China, could succeed in other countries as well. But it also paved the way for retaliation against Chinese programs like Temu and Shein.

“It feels like every Chinese entrepreneur needs a degree in political science or international relations to navigate their future,” said Kevin Xu, founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in artificial intelligence technology.

Other companies with global Internet products, such as Meta and Google, are also facing global scrutiny, said Jiangang Li, chief executive of Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works. “But as American companies, they don’t face the kind of distrust that TikTok has caused in the eyes of politicians and regulators in the West,” Lee said.

This is how governments went after TikTok.

Total ban: India and Nepal

A ban in the United States could cut off TikTok from one of its most important markets. But TikTok has already experienced the loss of its once largest audience. The Indian government banned the app in 2020, after the geopolitical conflict between India and China escalated into hand-to-hand combat on their shared border.

TikTok disappeared from app stores and its website was blocked, forcing creators who made a living from the app to rebuild their audience on other platforms. Some local alternatives have emerged, but American tech giants have benefited the most. Both YouTube and Instagram now have twice as many users in India as in the United States.

Authorities in neighboring Nepal have shut down TikTok for nearly a year over its refusal to limit content the government has called hate speech that disrupts “social harmony.” The ban was lifted in August after current Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli headed the government for the fourth time.

Fines and enforced local restrictions: Russia and Indonesia

The Russian government has repeatedly fined TikTok for allowing the distribution of content that does not comply with the country’s censorship rules, including topics such as sex, gender and feminism. The last two fines imposed by Russian courts over the past six months amount to about $90,000.

In Indonesia, TikTok has launched online stores, which it is betting heavily on as a new source of revenue. The app has nearly as many users in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest country, as it does in the United States. But in 2023, the government passed a law that forced TikTok to shut down its online store within days.

TikTok Shop was unable to reopen until it merged with Tokopedia, Indonesia’s largest e-commerce company. For many store owners, the rebuilding of the audience was slow, but for TikTok, the trial had an advantage: access to a network of couriers and logistics services established to deliver packages to Indonesia’s 17,000 islands.

Blocked on government devices: Taiwan, UK, Canada and others

Some governments have tried to balance concerns about TikTok’s security with freedom of expression.

Taiwan banned the app from government devices in 2019. But officials say they are not considering an outright ban because they do not want to curb Taiwan’s culture of public debate. The United Kingdom, Australia and France, as well as the European Union executive and New Zealand parliament, have adopted the same approach. TikTok was already banned from government-owned mobile devices in Canada when the government ordered TikTok to close its offices in the country in November, citing a national security risk posed by ByteDance.

In documents filed in a Canadian court last month to challenge the order, TikTok argued that the Canadian government had ordered it to delay the pending proceedings until the United States decided its approach to the company.

Meagan Tobin is based in Taipei and covers business and technology issues in Asia with a special focus on China. More from Meagan Tobin