Tick tock, tick tock … that’s the sound of time running out for Gen Z’s favourite app. On Wednesday the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or get banned in the US. It’s not clear whether the bill would pass in the Senate. However, the White House has said it supports the legislation. All in all, things don’t look great for TikTok.

Lawmakers would have you believe that the reason they’re on the warpath when it comes to TikTok is because Beijing-based ByteDance is a national security threat. They’re worried that China is going to do nefarious things with personal user data and that the TikTok algorithm has the ability to unduly influence Americans. It should be noted that while these fears aren’t unfounded, lawmakers’ obsession with the platform being controlled by China seems to ignore the fact that – as the Financial Times notes – “some 60% of [ByteDance] is actually owned by ‘international’ investors, overwhelmingly American”.

While the US government may be citing national security as their motivation for clamping down on TikTok, influential model and activist Emily Ratajkowski has other ideas. On Thursday Ratajkowski told her 2.7 milliom TikTok followers that she reckons the government wants to ban the platform because it has become a hub for progressive activism.

“Because this is one of the few platforms that isn’t completely controlled by the US government, or through corporations that have the US government’s interest in mind, progressive politics have been able to blossom on here,” Ratajkowski said.

“TikTok is being banned,” she added, “because the US government is legitimately scared with the influence that it’s having … which to me indicates that TikTok is a very powerful tool........

© The Guardian