Despite the narrative being about a threat from China, efforts to ban TikTok in the United States were largely stagnant until the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas reignited discussions around the legislation, according to former US Congressman Mike Gallagher.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference alongside Senator Mark Warner, Gallagher explained how the proposed ban, originally introduced over national security concerns, gained renewed urgency after the attack.
“I want to see if you’re going to tell the real story,” Warner said to Gallagher during the discussion.
Gallagher responded, “So we had a bipartisan consensus. We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of anti-Semitic content on the platform and our bill had legs again.”
In March 2024, the US House of Representatives passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest its US operations to an entity with no ties to the Chinese government or risk a nationwide ban. However, after taking office on January 20, President Donald Trump issued an executive order delaying enforcement of the law by 75 days.
Gallagher also criticized TikTok’s response to the proposed ban, saying the platform made a strategic error. “And then there was a huge miscalculation by TikTok when it became apparent that we were going to pass it out of committee. They forced sort of a pop-up on the app that allowed people to call their members of Congress, and kids were calling into their members of Congress during school hours threatening to commit suicide if TikTok went away,” he said.
He added, “And for those of us who were concerned about the use of this platform for propaganda purposes or brainwashing, it sort of proved the point in the moment.”
Reporter Ken Klippenstein obtained a State Department memo, with an analysis of the situation:
“[Foreign Affairs Deputy Director General Emmanuel] disagreed with Russo’s assertion that the United States and Israel faced a major credibility problem as a result of the unpopular war on Gaza. The Israelis seemed oblivious to the fact that they are facing major, possibly generational damage to their reputation not just in the region but elsewhere in the world. They made the following three main counterpoints to this argument:
“Israel’s main challenge, according to Nahshon, is ‘power projection.’
“Young people have turned against Israel in large part because the Tik-Tok algorithm favors pro-Palestinian content.
“Public opinion polling shows there is a ‘silent majority’ of people who continue to support Israel, especially in Europe and the United States. The ‘silver lining’ of October 7 is that it now allows Israel to see who its real friends are.”
Senator Mitt Romney, a vocal supporter of the ban, linked his position directly to TikTok’s prominence in discussions about Israel. “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts,” Romney said.
