If the US Bans TikTok, WeChat Might Be Next

Jimmy Zhou is a New Yorker; his mother, in her seventies, moved to the United States from Dongguan, China, in 1982, a few years before he was born. Out of all the messaging apps to choose from, there’s only one his mother feels comfortable using—in fact, it’s the only app she knows how to use. 

US-owned messaging apps, including WhatsApp and Signal, are banned in China, so for Zhou’s mother, WeChat—a social messaging and payments platform owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent—has become a lifeline. The app has around 19 million daily active users in the US. Many of them, like Zhou’s mother, depend on the app to stay connected to family overseas and to the tight-knit Chinese communities in the States. 

Zhou, 38, works in project management and mobile app development, and says he’s conflicted about using the app, which is heavily censored and monitored in China. (WeChat users outside of China received notifications last year informing them that their personal data, including likes, comments, and search history, would be transmitted back to the People’s Republic.) But Zhou says he’s willing to make the tradeoff between privacy and staying connected to his parents. “For my generation, it’s easy enough for us to move on to another app,” he says. “There’s a million different apps, but for those that are not tech savvy … it will be difficult for them to move to another application.”

Over the past few months, the US government has been ramping up pressure on Chinese-owned technology companies and, in particular, TikTok, the social video platform owned by Beijing-headquartered ByteDance. Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden told TikTok that it faces a total ban if it doesn’t sever ties with China. TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew is due to testify before Congress today. Three proposed pieces of legislation—the DATA Act, the RESTRICT Act,  and the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act—all take aim at foreign companies that process Americans’ data. TikTok, which has 150 million active users in the US, has routinely been named the primary target.

But TikTok isn’t the only Chinese tech company with a huge user base in the US. There’s Shein, the fast-fashion brand; Temu, the online marketplace; and CapCut, a video editing app also owned by ByteDance. And then there’s WeChat, a company that has openly said it sends user data back to China—and one that the US has already tried to ban in the past. If TikTok does get banned or restricted, WeChat—and other Chinese apps—could be next in line.

“If TikTok were to be banned, it is possible that WeChat, as well as other Chinese apps, could come under scrutiny by the US government,” Riccardo Cociani, the principal analyst for Asia Pacific at Sibylline, an intelligence and geopolitical risk firm, says. “The RESTRICT Act and DATA Act would allow the US government to enhance its scrutiny of apps—not only Chinese ones–deemed to pose risks to US national security.” 

WeChat is often referred to as a messaging app, but it’s far more than that. It integrates social media and ecommerce features, creating a platform where it’s relatively easy to build businesses and communities. People in Asian diasporas, and those who live and work in Asian communities in the US, use the app to make connections, talk to relatives back home, read news updates, share virtual hóng bāo 红包 (red envelopes of money), and post updates in their friend feed. 

“You always want to find something that reminds you of home,” Kat Lieu, 38, says. “So, you want to connect with people who have the same cultures and share the same language. I think that’s why, for my neighbors, WeChat has been such a community.” 

The author—who lives in Renton, Washington, about 19 kilometers southeast of Seattle—frequently posts colorful baking creations on her TikTok channel, “Subtle Asian Baking,” where she has 72,000 followers. Lieu, who is half-Chinese and half-Vietnamese, says she feels burnt out from social media but that apps like WeChat bring about a sense of comfort and community for Asian diasporas. “That’s how you form the community. That’s how you feel like you belong,” she says.

In Chinatown, Las Vegas, WeChat remains one of the quickest ways to share news and crime alerts. When a waiter at Shanghai Taste, a Shanghainese-style restaurant, was shot 11 times during an attempted burglary in 2021, hundreds of community members in Vegas closely followed the story via local WeChat groups.

“Within minutes, the whole community knew strictly through WeChat communication even before the local news picked it up,” Joe Muscaglione, who cofounded the restaurant with his business partner Jimmy Li, says. “If there’s ever any kind of crime, it’s instantly shared within the community within minutes. So, it’s really valuable to everybody in the Chinatown community and the Asian community in general.”

Muscaglione, 60, says Sicilian family members abroad have also begun to embrace the app for all of its features. “It’s like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all in one,” he says. “I have a lot of my relatives in Italy that are all using WeChat now because they’ve seen the value of it. So, it’s gone from being basically just Chinese [users] to being the preferred app.” 

When asked about the potential security and privacy risks, Muscaglione says he isn’t worried in the slightest. “If there’s people spying on me, that’s fine. That’s their prerogative—not mine,” he says. “I’ve been using WeChat since it was invented. I’ve never had any kind of hacking or any kind of problem at all.”

In 2020, former President Donald Trump tried banning WeChat, along with TikTok, on the grounds of national security. After he announced the plan, WeChat downloads surged. A judge blocked the move, and upon coming into office, President Joe Biden revoked Trump’s executive orders, adding that further evaluation was needed. Biden has since revived his predecessor’s arguments in targeting TikTok—but not WeChat.

US concerns over TikTok are based on concerns over privacy and a perception that it could be used to manipulate public sentiment.

TikTok has been found to be able to track a user’s keystrokes and taps, their IP location, biometric information, search history, message content, what they’re watching, and for how long. Leaked audio from meetings at the company that were obtained by Buzzfeed News revealed that “everything is seen in China,” including data from US users. Several employees at Bytedance were fired in 2022 for misusing user data to spy on journalists in the US—something the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation are still investigating.

The platform also appears to be vulnerable to censorship and algorithmic manipulation. This month, a company executive openly said they had overridden the app’s algorithm to push content on TikTok, and the platform has been reported to suppress content from users with Down syndrome, autism, and other disabilities, as well as users deemed “poor or ugly.” The app’s moderators have also censored videos on Tiananmen Square and Tibetan independence, which means users in the US are presented with China’s version of the story. It’s these aspects that raise red flags for disinformation and cybersecurity experts.

“The things that keep me up at night with this are the more difficult things to understand—the aggregate, the larger picture, the propaganda—things that can be done at scale to move a whole population one or two ticks,” says Adam Marrè, a former FBI cyber special agent and the chief information security officer at Arctic Wolf, a cybersecurity company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, adding that “psychological models and the interactive nature” of apps like TikTok leave room for political manipulation as well. 

Maureen Shanahan, the director of global corporate communications at TikTok, denied reports that the app censors information, saying: “TikTok does not allow the practices you claim, and anyone can go on the app today and find content that’s critical of the Chinese government.”

Whether the government’s concerns over censorship are enough to justify banning the service, or whether average users face an immediate risk, isn’t clear.

“I think it’s fair to say the conversation is driven by fear,” says Dakota Cary, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and a consultant at Krebs Stamos Group, a cybersecurity consulting firm in Washington, D.C. “The core experience in this conversation is fear. Are we subject to influence that we don’t know about? Is this an attack? I don’t think that making policy decisions from a place of fear leads to good decisions.”

Analysts point out that there are also double standards at play in the debate around data protection. “Everybody does it—not just TikTok. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google, you name it. If you’re not paying for an amazing service, then you are part of the product, and being part of the product means that your information is being taken and monetized,” Marrè says.

The reason that TikTok, of all of the Chinese-owned apps, has faced such intense pressure is mainly because of its scale and reach. “There’s a huge difference between TikTok and those others,” Marrè says. “Even though they’re in the top 20, TikTok is the Leviathan.” 

But, analysts say, if a ban on TikTok does go ahead, there’s a strong chance that WeChat could be next. 

Cociani says that banning the platform in the US “would be a highly escalatory move,” and could worsen relations with China. And, it might be counterproductive. 

“It would render overall international communication harder and possibly more expensive,” Cociani says. “WeChat users in banned jurisdictions would need to resort to VPNs in a bid to bypass the ban—or their families and contacts would need to use VPNs to bypass Chinese censorship on foreign apps, such as WhatsApp and Facebook.” 

In New York, that’s what Zhou worries about—his parents getting cut off on a whim.  “I think it’s valid that there are security concerns … but I also don’t think an outright ban of it—it’s just not the right way to go about approaching things,” Zhou says. “I mean, any app could collect data. How far does it reach? Like, any non-friendly US country? It just has a lot of ramifications.”

A ban would be devastating for older generations, he says, adding that it would remove them from an “ecosystem” of family, friends, and businesses housed in between the US and China.

“We … could probably figure something out and teach them to at least be in contact with us, but just removing the main sources of communication and entertainment from them? It’ll be tough for them,” Zhou said. “It’s not only people in China, it’s people here.”