By Björn Jeffery, SvD Tech Brief. Published in Svenska Dagbladet on 20 January 2025.

TikTok is banned — and permitted again a few hours later. The law says one thing and the incoming president says another. But both American and Chinese decision-makers have one thing in common: they know something we don’t.

“TikTok is definitely a threat to national security. We have seen classified evidence.”

Democrat Josh Gottheimer speaks with absolute certainty. The American congressman from New Jersey is one of the politicians behind the law banning Chinese ownership of TikTok, among other things. When the law came into force over the weekend, it should have felt like a victory. It didn’t quite work out that way. When the incoming president said he wanted to circumvent the law immediately, the feeling of a political win evaporated.

What we are left with instead is a long list of questions.

The first concerns the classified evidence. Gottheimer, along with several other politicians, has referred to information that American politicians have been given access to. It is said to have been so persuasive that both Democrats and Republicans united around the conclusion that TikTok poses a security threat. In the House of Representatives, the law passed by the clear margin of 352 to 65.

American politicians are, however, among the small minority of people who know what this evidence actually consists of. None of it has been shared with the public. It is unclear whether the evidence has even been shared with TikTok itself, so that it could respond.

The situation is therefore rather strange. There are 170 million monthly users of TikTok in the US, all wondering what dangerous activities TikTok may have been engaged in. There are a few hundred politicians essentially saying “trust us — we’re doing you a favour by banning TikTok.” As an outsider it is impossible to assess how serious this evidence is. But one can clearly observe that the method for convincing the American public has been sorely lacking.

The second question concerns TikTok’s own motives. The law does not ban TikTok as an app — it bans its Chinese ownership. Parent company ByteDance, a commercial enterprise with investors from around the world, therefore had every reason to sell the app during the period from last spring until now. So far, it has refused.

TikTok’s value has been estimated at around 40 to 50 billion dollars, or roughly 450 to 550 billion kronor. Regardless of whether they think the law is wrong or not, it is usually in commercial companies’ interest to do what maximises revenues and profit.

Unless other motives are at play, of course.

The Chinese state owns 1 percent of the shares in ByteDance. In the normal course of events, such a small stake would not be able to block a sale or significantly affect the company at all. The structure is known as “golden shares” — a name referring to the disproportionate influence they carry over a company’s operations. The method is common in China, and in January 2023 the Chinese state also purchased golden shares in subsidiaries of the Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham has written on X that it is precisely the golden shares that are preventing the TikTok situation from being resolved. He adds that he will propose legislation banning any company that holds these golden shares from trading on American stock exchanges — though this would not affect ByteDance, since it is not publicly listed.

The absence of business logic undermines TikTok and ByteDance’s arguments. If they genuinely have nothing to do with the Chinese state — then what company would turn down 500 billion kronor? Here too, they know something we don’t.

The third question concerns how clearly content on TikTok can be controlled, and to what extent this is already happening today. It is worth recalling that TikTok does not exist in China at all, since much of the information shared on it would not be legal there. ByteDance does, however, own a similar app, Douyin, which operates in China — though it prioritises content differently from TikTok and is described as having a profile that leans more towards educational material.

What is shown on TikTok is governed by an algorithm — a kind of data system that tries to predict which videos each user might enjoy. The feed is adjusted based on feedback. As SvD has previously reported, content is selected based on what you actually watch, not what you have expressed an interest in. Getting drawn into clips that encourage eating disorders, for example, can lead to ever more of them appearing — even if you try to avoid that type of content.

Beyond individual calibration, it is also possible to steer what content is shown from a central level. A study from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University demonstrates that this is already happening today. The study was originally released in August 2024 and received a good deal of criticism — from TikTok itself in particular. In December an updated version was released with twice the amount of source data, and the study will also be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

The study shows that when searching for topics considered controversial by the Chinese state — the protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, for example — there is markedly less material on TikTok than on comparable social media platforms. One of the study’s authors, Joel Finkelstein, told The Free Press that “the scaled indoctrination is not hypothetical, it is real.” A search on Instagram about the Uyghur people showed negative sentiment towards China in more than 80 percent of all videos. The corresponding figure for TikTok was just 11 percent.

A TikTok spokesperson strongly criticised the study and considered it to have been designed to reach a predetermined conclusion. But the questions remain: is content on TikTok being steered to achieve a political goal? To what extent is this happening? And even if it is not happening today — could it happen in the future?

The fourth and final question concerns Donald Trump. During his previous term as president, he proposed banning TikTok. Now he is being portrayed as the saviour. TikTok is thanking him in the app itself before he has even taken office as president. Why does he suddenly want to save TikTok? And is it even possible for him to do so without breaking American law?

Most likely, Trump will push through a temporary three-month extension — a kind of reprieve while a commercial deal is being prepared. Given the questions above, the negotiations will be difficult. American authorities are demanding a deal; Chinese authorities are opposed to one. Both cannot get what they want. But by deferring the matter for a few months, Trump becomes a temporary winner and restores normalcy for the 170 million users here and now. The underlying problem remains, however: the law has been passed and the Supreme Court has ruled it constitutional.

Viewed from outside, the situation most resembles a spectacle — with states, politicians, and companies swinging back and forth in an unusually chaotic manner.

For those of us watching, several central pieces of the picture are missing. Are we in the middle of an information war between the US and China? The answer to that question appears to be classified. That is a shame. Everyone would benefit from understanding the motives at play — and who stands to win in this dispute.

Update: President Donald Trump subsequently approved a deal on TikTok in the United States through an executive order, with Trump telling reporters at the White House that Chinese President Xi Jinping had also agreed.