(Editor’s note: Caroline Brandes is the Editor-in-Chief of The Saber. Any opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Saber staff.)

So, I just want to start off with a disclaimer. I am not happy about any of this. There is no good guy here. Tiktok, ByteDance, the US and the Chinese Governments, all of them have become overrun with corruption and greed. I have truly lost most if not all of my confidence and faith in the competency of those leading our country. 

The whole situation started in 2020, when during his first term, President Donald Trump began a campaign to ban TikTok, the social media app owned by Chinese-based company ByteDance. The executive orders he attempted to pass were blocked by the courts, and when Trump left office in 2021, they were officially revoked by his successor Joe Biden. Fast forward three years, and in April of 2024, the US Government officially passed a bill that gave ByteDance until Jan. 19 of the following year to sell TikTok to an approved buyer, or face a nation-wide ban. The reason for this? Concerns of data privacy, and the Chinese government’s potential involvement in the app. 

Obviously, people weren’t happy. Approximately 170 million Americans have TikTok accounts, and a portion use TikTok as a source of income. That includes money from the creator fund, promotional deals, or simply as marketing for small businesses. There is currently no evidence that any US data has been given to the Chinese government. Several have raised concerns about a potential violation of the First Amendment; however, when challenged in front of the Supreme Court, the ban was deemed constitutional.

Trump was re-elected as president in November 2024 and spoke out against the ban, a change from his position four years previous. Jan. 19, 2025, TikTok went dark in the US at approximately 10:29 p.m. EST. It was reinstated just hours later with Trump’s repeat inauguration, after he signed an executive order granting ByteDance a 75 day extension to either sell or be banned again.

Bear with me for a second, I’ll try my best not to sound like a conspiracy theorist. What the government isn’t saying is that in an effort to ban TikTok, competing social media company Meta spent a record amount of money lobbying for the ban. They also aren’t disclosing the real reason Trump changed his mind on the ban. Key investors of ByteDance donated a significant amount of money towards his presidential campaign. Aka, for the low price of 1.4 million, ByteDance was able to buy the president’s executive power. 

Now, shelving the obvious corruption, let’s instead focus on the fact that the ban itself goes against the very first amendment of the US Constitution, the one guaranteeing free speech. In fact, there’s even a legal precedent for cases like this. In the Supreme Court case Near v. Minnesota (1931), the courts established limits against prior restraint, which is essentially government censorship. The courts still stipulated that the government could shut down discussion of military secrets. Here’s the catch though. For the US Government to censor free speech, clear evidence must be presented that national security is truly at risk. Which again, was not done with the ban of TikTok. 

Additionally, Trump has repeatedly made it clear that he wants the US government to have some sort of control over the app. During a press conference, the president stated, “What I’m thinking of saying to someone is buy it and give half to the US, half, and we’ll give you a permit.” 

This might just be me, but the idea of one of America’s biggest social media platforms being regulated by the federal government feels mildly dystopian. Who knows, maybe I’m paranoid.

This whole situation is disgusting. I’m against the unequivocal ban of TikTok, although I do believe that regulations should be put in place, given the heavy Chinese presence involved with the app’s parent company. But the real reason that’s I’m upset is because I believe due diligence simply didn’t occur. Xenophobia, political affiliations, corruption, and simple incompetence clouded the judgment of many of our leaders. There simply hasn’t been enough evidence to demonstrate that a ban on TikTok needs to occur, and doing so is a flagrant violation of American citizen’s first amendment rights. The government doesn’t have the right to say, ‘You can speak freely, but only on platforms that we ordain.’ If I don’t mind the Chinese government having access to the fact that I like to watch funny cat videos, then that’s my business and mine alone. 

And hey, if you want to ban TikTok, don’t stop there. How about banning Facebook, which has data sharing agreements with four Chinese companies, including one previously deemed a national security risk? Or banning other Chinese corporations like Shein and Temu, which perpetuate countless human rights violations and contribute massively towards the declining global climate? But the US government won’t. Because they weren’t told to, by the lobbyists paid for by American based tech-giants. 

At the end of the day, I could be totally wrong. China could be using TikTok to secretly inject some sort of deadly virus into our DNA, or secretly nuking our brain waves with radiation. They could be stealing our data, and using it to blackmail half the nation into becoming communist. I wouldn’t know, I’m not a tech person. But it’s the principle of the thing. It’s disgusting that if you’re rich enough, you can quite literally buy a vote in Congress. It’s disgusting that absolutely no one in a position of political power did their actual jobs and employed critical thinking skills. It’s disgusting that the current US president changed his mind on an issue he brought up in the first place for a little over one million dollars.