Biden approves a bill that would outlaw TikTok

President Joe Biden was captured on TikTok playing golf at a public golf course in Michigan last month.

He had to stay inside because of the rain, so he had a putting competition with a 13-year-old named Hurley “HJ” Coleman IV on a practice mat. The Coleman family shared a video on the app. In the video, Biden made a putt and then the teenager knocked his own shot in. They captioned it “I had to sink the rebuttal. ”

The TV cameras that usually follow the president couldn’t come inside.

Biden approved a law on Wednesday that might stop TikTok from being used in the US, even though his campaign used the app and tried to team up with popular users. The president is having a hard time keeping the support of young voters. Now, people who use the app a lot are also criticizing him. The app is a main way that many young Americans get their news.

Kahlil Greene, who is known as the “Gen Z Historian” on TikTok and has over 650,000 followers, said that it doesn’t make sense for the Biden administration to support banning TikTok while also using it for his campaign.

I think it shows that he and his friends understand how important and influential TikTok is.

The Biden campaign says its way of doing things is right and does not agree that the White House’s actions are working against its political plans.

Rob Flaherty, who used to work at the White House and is now working for Biden’s reelection campaign, said it would be foolish to ignore any place where people are learning about the president.

Flaherty mentioned that Biden’s team built connections with popular TikTok users during the 2020 election. He also said that TikTok has become more powerful, acting like a search engine on the internet and influencing stories about the president.

The Biden campaign needs to reach voters in lots of different places because the media is all spread out. They put their content on TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to connect with potential supporters.

It made its own videos for TikTok, but also used videos made by regular people who talk to the president. This includes a family sharing a post about eating fries and other food from Cook Out fast food chain when Biden visited Raleigh, North Carolina. Also, Coleman posted a video.

Critics of TikTok say that since it’s owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance, it could allow the Chinese government to control what information American people see and access their personal data. The Chinese government can control private businesses and the US has not shown any proof that the government made the app do what it wants.

Biden signed a law on Wednesday that says ByteDance must sell the app to a US company within a year or it will be banned in the country. ByteDance says the law goes against the First Amendment and they will take legal action.

Donald Trump, who used to be President, now says he doesn’t want TikTok to be banned, even though he tried to make it happen when he was in charge. He wanted the company that owns TikTok to sell it to a different company.

The White House doesn’t use TikTok, and Biden stopped government workers from using the app in December 2022. However, the Biden campaign also started using TikTok during the Super Bowl this year. The president chose not to do a traditional TV interview on game day, and used TikTok to share a political message instead.

The old White House spokesperson Jen Psaki held an online meeting in 2022 with more than 24 popular people on the app to talk about how the US is dealing with Ukraine. The meeting was made fun of on “Saturday Night Live. ”

Many similar events have happened, like a party with popular people at the White House last Christmas and a party to watch the President’s speech in March. Biden had a big event to raise money for his campaign in New York. He had a party at Radio City Music Hall with Obama and Clinton. There was also a special time for social media stars to meet Biden. After the party, people got to talk with Biden.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that the law Biden approved is not a ban. This is about keeping our country safe. The White House isn’t saying they don’t want Americans to use TikTok.

TikTok has 170 million people in the US who use it. A study from the Pew Research Center found that one out of three young adults in the US get news from TikTok, while only 14% of all adults do.

Young adults are more likely to disagree with banning TikTok in the US than older adults, according to a poll by AP-NORC done in January. Almost half of young adults aged 18 to 29 dislike it, while only 35% of all adults in the US feel the same way.

2 out of every 10 adults in the US use TikTok every day. This includes 44% of young adults aged 18 to 29. 7 out of every 100 people between the ages of 18 and 29 use TikTok all the time, and 28 out of every 100 people use it many times a day.

Priorities USA, a big supporter of the Democrats, is giving about $1 million to over 100 TikTok influencers who are making videos to support Biden before the November election. They see this as a way to help get more people to vote for Biden, just like they do with other ways of organizing and communicating.

Even if TikTok is banned, most of its popular creators are also on other platforms like YouTube and Instagram, so they can still share their videos there, according to Danielle Butterfield, who is in charge of Priorities USA.

“Butterfield said that TikTok users are found in many different online places. “