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The Tik-Tok Bill is About Antisemitism Too
The next few days are crucial in the story of the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (commonly known as the “TikTok bill”). The bill requires that TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their ownership of the app by January 19, 2025, or face a ban from internet platforms in America. In the days leading up to this deadline, the United States Supreme Court is determining whether the legislation passes muster under the First Amendment.
The TikTok bill was developed and passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support in both houses of Congress and signed by President Biden. Its supporters saw the documented harm that the deliberately biased content developed and disseminated by entities closely associated with the Chinese government is doing to the national security of the United States. Congress and the president reasonably determined that a foreign adversary should not be permitted to sway the content of an app that has such a pervasive presence in the lives of Americans.
This reason is good enough on its own to uphold this legislation. But there is another, equally important benefit. The same interests that are working to undermine the national security of the United States are also tearing apart our civil society by sowing hate and division, especially aimed at our children.
The Jewish Federations of North America, of which I am the president and CEO, actively supported the passage of the TikTok bill. When I was asked why an organization dedicated to the safety, security and flourishing of the Jewish communities across America would get involved in this legislation, my answer was simple. The number one concern of Jewish communities across America today is the rise of antisemitism. We cannot possibly hope to fight back if we don’t address the crisis of antisemitism on the most popular social media platforms.
TikTok’s contribution to this problem is particularly egregious. One study found that people who use TikTok for 30 minutes or more daily are significantly more likely to hold antisemitic or anti-Israel views than comparable users of Instagram and X. Another study found that in just one-year, antisemitic comments on TikTok rose 912%.
Worse, evidence was clearly available – most prominently provided by a former TikTok employee who tried to address the problem internally – that TikTok’s bias is deliberate, not some technical issue caused by the number of posts on one topic or another.
On TikTok, evidence of suffering by Jews was blocked, while unproven and clearly false narratives of suffering claimed to be caused by Jews was given super charged status by the relevant algorithms. While a majority of American voters support Israel, TikTok’s algorithm gave videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags 15 times more views than videos with pro-Israel hashtags. All of this is why we wrote to each member of Congress to say clearly that a vote for the TikTok bill was a vote against antisemitism. (Link to letter)
The bipartisan leadership of Congress that moved this legislation forward was particularly concerned about the impact of TikTok on our nation’s security. We would add that the concern should also be about our future of our country. When young people who get the majority of their information from TikTok are polled, they hold not only lower opinions of Jews, but also of America. We doubt this is a coincidence.
We do not support or seek censorship of any kind, but we have every reason to hope that a different ownership of this important information source – one not controlled by a dictatorship that has shown hostility to America, to Israel and to Jews – would be more accountable to its users and the marketplace of free information and ideas.
We know the Supreme Court does not decide cases based on opinion pieces. But we hope that the public, in reviewing this issue, will continue to support the TikTok bill not only because of the threats to national security that its authors perceived but also because of the serious threats to the safety and security of the Jewish community and the damage to America’s civil society that is being done by allowing companies like TikTok to disclaim any responsibility for the hate they are spreading.