The White House is so concerned about TikTok's security risks that federal employees are not allowed to use the app on government phones. Biden administration officials are also helping craft legislation to ban TikTok in the United States.
But those concerns were put aside Thursday, the night of President Biden's State of the Union address, when dozens of social media influencers, many of them TikTok stars, were invited to the White House for a watch party.
The crowd took selfies in the state dining room, shared drinks with the first lady and waved from the White House balcony as Mr. Biden headed to address Congress.
“Don't jump on me, I need you!” Biden shouted to young influencers filming from above, a scene that was unsurprisingly captured in a TikTok video that has been watched by hundreds of thousands of people. It was distributed to many people.
Thursday's party at the White House was an example of Biden's political concerns colliding head-on with national security concerns. Despite growing concerns that TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, could compromise Americans' personal data or manipulate what they view, the president's campaign said it would It is relying on the app to energize disgruntled young voters ahead of the election.
“From a national security perspective, the campaign to join TikTok was never a good thing. It threatened the use of a platform that everyone in the administration and in Washington, D.C., recognized was a national issue. It was acceptable,” said Lindsay Gorman, director of technology and geopolitics. He is a member of the German Marshall Fund and a former technical advisor to the Biden administration.
TikTok is the second most popular platform among American teenagers after YouTube, making it an attractive political tool. But concerns about the app's structure are growing, with a House committee this week introducing legislation that would ban TikTok from U.S. app stores unless the platform leaves ByteDance.
When lawmakers talk about TikTok, they focus on privacy concerns and whether data about users is stored in China or accessible to Chinese officials who could request the company to hand over the information. There is a tendency to guess.
But national security officials have deeper concerns. The algorithms that guide what users see are now almost entirely designed in China. The key is to prevent Chinese engineers, possibly under state influence, from using the code in ways that could censor or manipulate what American users see. TikTok has denied these concerns and said its opponents have not presented evidence to support them.
Officials say that's especially important now that election season is approaching. The app could provide a sophisticated tool for Chinese officials if they try to influence elections. But even the bill currently moving through Congress may not affect this. This is because it takes more than five months from the time the bill is signed until it takes effect. At best, it will be only about a month before election day.
The White House has supported the restrictions.
Biden's National Security Council called the House bill an “important and welcome step,” and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it should be quickly sent to the president's desk for signature. Ta. The path the bill will take in the Senate is unclear, but Biden insisted Friday that he would approve it.
“If it passes, I will sign it,” Biden said.
ByteDance has spent Mr. Biden's tenure promoting a plan to address security concerns about TikTok by storing U.S. user data on Oracle servers in the United States. The plan was at the heart of a draft 2022 agreement between ByteDance and administration negotiators. But government officials were concerned at the time that the proposed agreement did not go far enough to address concerns.
Despite these concerns, the political benefits of TikTok were clear this week.
TikTok political commentator Harry Sisson, 21, reached more than 800,000 followers from his perch in the White House on Thursday night, joining others in watching Biden's State of the Union address on Thursday.
“He challenged the Supreme Court directly to its face to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Sison said in a post during his speech. “This is a must see. Watch the clip.”
Later, in a fourth video of his speech, Sison said of the president: “The president came to talk to us about how content production is going to be extremely important in 2024, because the media landscape is changing.”
He added: “No one really watches cable news anymore.”
The Biden campaign declined to answer questions about specific security protocols for TikTok posts or why the campaign adopted the platform before exiting ByteDance. The White House denied that Biden's national security team wanted to ban the app.
“We don't see this as a ban on these apps; that's not it, but to ensure that their ownership does not fall into the hands of people who could do us harm. ,” Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. “This obviously concerns our national security, and that's what we're focused on here.”
The Biden campaign took to TikTok on Super Bowl night.
Previously, the administration had avoided opening its own TikTok account while cultivating an audience for the app by inviting social media stars to briefings on coronavirus vaccines and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But after refusing to give the president the traditional halftime interview at Sunday's Super Bowl, his campaign posted an inaugural post on TikTok that poked fun at right-wing conspiracy theories that claim Biden rigged the game.
Democrats say the introduction of social media platforms like TikTok is an attempt to meet voters where they are.
“We have to deal with the cards we're dealt,” says Quentin James, co-founder of Collective PAC, an organization dedicated to electing Black officials. “Even if there are international security concerns, when a tool is available, we must use it. The Biden campaign will no longer have access to this, and the Trump campaign and others If this faction becomes available, it will be at a huge disadvantage.”
Former President Donald J. Trump attacked his administration over a possible ban on TikTok, saying it would only empower Meta, Facebook's parent company.
Trump's criticism of the effort was notable as he was working on a plan to sell TikTok's U.S. operations to Oracle during his time in office. Its CEO, Safra Catz, was a member of Trump's transition team in 2016 and a key supporter of his campaign.
Campaigns are trying to use the platform to connect with younger voters, but efforts by the White House and Congress to reform the company have angered TikTok users. After the House bill was introduced this week, TikTok took the unusually aggressive step of pushing a pop-up message to American users on Thursday asking them to call their representatives to protest the bill. Some offices in the Capitol said they have been inundated with calls, including from teenagers. Lawmakers complained that TikTok misrepresented the bill, saying it specified an immediate ban from the platform.
Meanwhile, a video posted by the Biden campaign regarding the North Carolina gubernatorial race quickly attracted comments calling on Biden to end the ban on TikTok.
One user expressed his confusion in a comment that garnered likes from other users on the app. “Aren't you going to ban TikTok?” Why did your team create an account for you? ”
david mccabe and David E. Sanger Contributed to reporting from Washington.