TikTok Has Badly Damaged Progressives

The Movement Doesn't Need This Platform

I am indifferent to whether or not the United States should ban TikTok. If you force me to pick a side, I would side with being against it, because I think it sets a bad precedent. I’ve never used TikTok, though I dabbled in it back in 2020; it does not particularly interest me as a platform. I would rather the government turn over every stone and do everything it can to protect Americans’ data so the platform can continue to be used freely before defaulting to a ban.

The proposal to ban TikTok, because of concerns that the Chinese government is using it to gain access to a user’s private information or manipulate Americans, crosses partisan and ideological lines. Its top proponent is far-right U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), but even President Joe Biden is considering endorsing a ban.

There are plenty of reasons to oppose a ban, the most obvious being free speech concerns. It’s one thing if they use the platforms in a dangerous way (e.g., banning Trump from Twitter after inciting an insurrection), but essentially banning every American is an extreme measure.

Progressives have jumped in to be the most prominent and vocal supporters of TikTok. U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York), a member of “the Squad,” was the first member of Congress to come out against a potential ban.

Progressives argue that TikTok is the most important organizing tool for activating young voters. Some left-wing activists suggest that targeting TikTok is about silencing progressives and removing a tool that they are using to successfully challenge the status quo.

While it might be true that TikTok plays a role in organizing young people and spreading messages to them, I do not think it’s been a net positive for the progressive movement and I do not think the movement would suffer without it. I believe the opposite; a world without TikTok would be a net positive for progressives. The platform is more harmful than helpful. TikTok has done tremendous damage to the reputation of progressives and young people in the general public.

The massive backlash against LGBTQ people, and specifically transgender people, stems right from the proliferation of TikTok as a major social media tool. Chaya Raichik, once a disgraced realtor from Brooklyn, became one of the most powerful voices in the conservative movement in the past few years simply by creating and managing a Twitter feed that just reposts crazy things people say on TikTok, presented as the common views of all progressives. Her social media handle @LibsOfTikTok has exploded in popularity not just among the right, and in QAnon circles, but among people who are social media obsessed and angry with liberals over school closures, vaccine mandates, and other COVID-related policies. She offers no context and little commentary on the videos she has shared, so many of them are taken out of context, but because TikTok doesn’t allow for context, this is easy to do. The popular conspiracy theory about LGBTQ teachers installing litter boxes in their classrooms for students to use if they identify as cats began because Raichik shared a TikTok video that was an inside joke between the poster and his or her followers. With no context provided, Raichik’s followers believed it to be true and that post and dozens of others went viral. Republican candidates for federal office believed it to be true.

LibsOfTikTok has been featured on Fox News and on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast. In another video, a doctor who offers gender-affirming care spoke about the services her hospital offers, and even though these services are utilized only after extensive psychological care and almost exclusive to teenagers, without any context, Raichik’s followers believed the doctor to be speaking about young children, creating a backlash that has led red states to roll back gender-affirming care to both young people and adults, and bomb threats to be made against the hospital that was featured.

Activists also posted videos on TikTok of themselves dancing, singing, and engaging in a party-like atmosphere at recent labor strikes, sparking backlash and, in the case of nurses in New York, scaring labor leaders into negotiating a quick end to the action out of fear that any backlash would put them in a more precarious negotiating position later.

TikTok is not made for political activism, it is created for fun. It’s created so people can do or so funny, wacky, and outrageous things, be creative and test the limits of their imagination. Such a thing is terrible for political activism because much of what is posted on TikTok is tongue-in-cheek. A social media site full of pasquinade video clips of people dancing or doing absurd things while pointing to political slogans comes across as unserious and camp. If you want voters to take your movement seriously, you have to give the issues you fight for the weight it deserves.

TikTok gives too much influence to show horses: people who are not interested in political activism, except for how it might increase their follower numbers and accumulation of “likes.” There are plenty of other social media platforms better suited for the type of activism progressives favor. Activists like Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints) and Harris Brewis (Hbomberguy) utilized YouTube and Twitch to make often long, but deeply explanatory and thought-out videos promoting progressive ideas and calling out right-wingers and gaining huge followings doing it. I know of multiple people who changed their views from right to left based on their videos. Even as they present their views in flashy ways (Natalie once did an entire video dressed as Marie Antoinette), the conversational style of their videos gave them credibility that you can’t get on TikTok.

If we do get a TikTok ban, progressives will be forced to return to platforms that worked for them before, which would be a net positive for them.