Over the past week, videos have started appearing on TikTok from users across the United States.
They all made fun of the same thing: how the app's ties to China made it a national security threat. Many implied that each of their TikTok accounts had been assigned a Chinese government agent to spy on them through the app, and that users would miss their personal spies.
“May we meet again in another life,” wrote one user on a farewell video set to Whitney Houston's version of Dolly Parton's “I Will Always Love You.” The video included an ai-generated image of a Chinese military officer.
The videos were just one way some of TikTok's 170 million monthly U.S. users reacted as they prepared for the app to disappear from the country on Sunday.
The Supreme Court will rule on a federal law that required TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app by Jan. 19 or face a ban in the United States. US officials have said China could use TikTok to collect Americans' private data and spread covert disinformation. TikTok, which claimed the sale is impossible and questioned the law, is now awaiting the Supreme Court's response.
The prospect of judges upholding the law has sparked a palpable sense of pain and dark humor throughout the enforcement. Some users have posted videos suggesting ways to circumvent a ban with technological solutions. Others have downloaded another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as “Red Note,” to mock the US government's concerns about TikTok's ties to China.
The videos highlight the collision taking place online between the law, which Congress passed with broad support last year, and everyday TikTok users, who are dismayed that the app could soon disappear.
“A lot of my TikTok feed now is TikTokers ridiculing the US government, TikTokers thanking their Chinese spy as a form of ridicule,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University and an expert in the global regulation of new technologies. “TikTokers recognize that they are not likely to be manipulated by anyone. They are actually quite sophisticated in terms of the information they receive.”
TikTok declined to comment on users' references to its ties to China.
Some users are not willing to give up the app (or its supposed spies) so easily.
Hundreds of TikTok videos from the last week have cataloged how teenagers could continue using the app in the United States, according to a New York Times review. One of the most popular methods described is the use of a VPN, or virtual private network, which can mask a user's location and make it appear that they are somewhere else.
“They can't actually ban TikTok in the US because VPNs aren't banned,” Sasha Casey, a TikTok user, said on a recent video He liked that more than 60,000 times. “Use a VPN. And send a photo to Congress while you do it, because that's what I'll do.”
While VPNs can make a phone, laptop, or other electronic device appear to be in a remote location, it's unclear whether the technology can bypass the ban. The actual location of a device is stored in many places, including the app store that was used to download TikTok.
TikTok fans also appear to be behind the sudden rise in popularity of Xiaohongshu, the most downloaded free app on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the US Apple Store. Hundreds of millions of people in China use the app which, like TikTok , features short videos and text posts. Xiaohongshu means “little red book” in Mandarin.
Chander anticipates the Supreme Court will uphold the ban law this week, though he believes TikTok has the winning case. He said Red Note downloads and Chinese spy memes showed that many Americans disagreed with their government's security concerns, particularly at the expense of free speech.
“When the United States shuts down a massive free speech service, which our democratic allies have not shut down, it will turn us into censors and put us in the unusual position of silencing expression,” Chander said. “It will make Americans who use TikTok very distrustful of the US government because it is upholding their best interests.”
