Bill Filed to Block TikTok Access on State Phones, Computers

On Monday Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R — Branch) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R — Perryville) filed S.B. 4 to restrict access to TikTok on computers, tablets, phones, and other devices owned by the State of Arkansas.

TikTok is the most popular social media platform in the world. The application boasts a billion users worldwide, and 135 million in the U.S., but many Americans are bothered by the application’s possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok. Last week FBI Director Christopher Wray voiced concerns about the CCP’s ability to influence ByteDance and TikTok.

The concerns are similar to those raised about Facebook’s and Twitter’s abilities to harvest user data and display or suppress information in their news feeds.

If the Chinese Communist Party can influence TikTok, the CCP may be able to manipulate content and influence users on the world’s largest social media platform.

S.B. 4 prohibits state employees and contractors from downloading or using the TikTok application on a device that is owned or leased by the State of Arkansas.

The bill does not ban TikTok for every Arkansan, but it does prevent government employees and contractors — such as public school teachers or people who work for government agencies — from using TikTok on phones or computers that belong to the State of Arkansas.

You can read S.B. 4 here.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

China and Hollywood

John Stonestreet, Radio Host and Director of the Colson Center

In 2020, Chinese box office revenue officially surpassed that of North America. Shirli Li writes in the Atlantic, “Filmmakers and actors have always been subject to bosses who decide which movies get to soar at the box office….Now, more than ever before, that boss is Beijing.” 

Fast and Furious star John Cena demonstrated this deference in May when he posted a back-bending apology to China, in Mandarin, for calling Taiwan a country. Another example is the potential ban facing Marvel’s The Eternals because its director, Chloé Zhao, criticized the Chinese Communist Party … eight years ago. 

Repeatedly, U.S. film companies posture as courageous defenders of human rights when they vocally oppose laws in states like GeorgiaNorth Carolina, and Texas. But then they’re deafeningly silent about doing business in China, a country actively imprisoning more than one million Uyghur Muslims, hiding the presence of massive slave labor camps and no freedom of any kind when it comes to journalism. Hollywood, it seems, mostly just listens to the money. 

The hope has always been that Western values would somehow infiltrate China and change it from the inside. But the opposite is happening. There’s nothing like the allure of massive profit to drown out our collective conscience.

Copyright 2021 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.