How a Ban on TikTok Might Impact PR and Marketing Pros

Doug Downs (00:04):

It may have been that chorus of red gummy bears that launched TikTok into our hearts. Back in 2019. A video on this new social media app was set to Adele's someone like you. A red gummy begins to belt out the song in Adele's voice, but then the mic cuts out and the chorus of gummies continues her song as the camera pans over. A crowd of gummy bears silly and cute and extremely watchable. Never.

(00:44):

The real origins of TikTok are hardly fairytale. It's a Frankenstein creation of three different apps. One was called Musically, which was launched in Shanghai in 2014, but had strong US business links in a Healthy US audience. In 2016, by dance launched a similar service in China called Duan in 2018 by dance, decided it was on something and bought musically, folded it in, and began tiktoks global expansion, huge trends, other existence to TikTok like Lil Nas X's Old Town Road or Curtis Roach's Bored in the House. Many TikTok communities have emerged and marketing strategies have latched onto them, most particularly the travel industry, which almost relies on TikTok for effective marketing. The app exploded in popularity throughout the west, but in India more than any other country. But that made some politicians start to think, what does it mean to have a Chinese app so quickly become a large part of modern life?

(01:49):

The accusations are kind of vague, mainly about data privacy and transfer. Although you could say that about any social media app, India has now completely banned TikTok twice, and now the US has passed a law requiring ByteDance sell the social media channel by January, 2025, or it will be banned there too. Compared to behemoths like Facebook and Instagram. TikTok has far fewer users in the us, but its engagement rate is significantly higher than both those who use TikTok, love it, and engage with it and brands like that. So what does a potential ban for TikTok mean for the communications industry today on stories and strategies? Could a ban leave users with an emotional void and seeking someone just like TikTok?

(02:58):

My name is Doug Downs. Just before we get started, a special thank you to Serine Melikian, who is a senior public relations manager. Serine on her LinkedIn page left a note mentioning Stories and Strategies that I absolutely loved "Doug Downs hosts with such ease, he could probably maintain rapport in a conversation with a brick wall, a blend of expert insights and in-depth discussions makes PR seem like a piece of cake. Almost." Serine. I am so grateful. For that note, these recommendations are absolutely huge for podcasts. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and as I said in my response to your note on LinkedIn, my wife would be the first one to insist that she has more experience talking with brick walls.

(03:42):

My guest this week is Cayce Myers, joining today from Roanoke, Virginia. Hey, Cayce.

Cayce Myers (03:47):

Hi, how are you?

Doug Downs (03:48):

I'm good. How are things in Roanoke today?

Cayce Myers (03:51):

They're great. A little overcast today, but otherwise a good day.

Doug Downs (03:55):

And when's the hot season in Roanoke? Are you getting into the hot season now or has that come a bit later on?

Cayce Myers (04:01):

It is interesting. I'm from Atlanta originally, and so there's no hot season used. Yeah, I'm used to being hot in March here, probably June. I have been out on the 4th of July where it was too cold to get in a pool.

Doug Downs (04:16):

Oh, wow. That's amazing. Cayce, you're a professor of public relations and the director of Graduate studies at the School of Communication at Virginia Tech. You have your accreditation in public relations, your A PR. You are a previous member of the Universal Accreditation Board and the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards in PRSA. And you're active in several organizations including the Arthur W. Page Society, the Public Relations Society of America, national Board of Directors, PRSA Foundation, trustee legal Research editor for the Institute for Public Relations, our friends at IPR and the National Press Clubs. Great to have you on the podcast. First off, what was your initial reaction to the signing of the National Security Act and how do you think that's going to impact not just TikTok, the one in the crosshairs, but social media overall?

Cayce Myers (05:10):

I would say that I wasn't very surprised this was coming, and this is one of these unusual things where we live in a politically polarized world in the United States, yet there was bipartisan support for this. And so that lends itself to kind of this momentum. I also wasn't surprised by a lot of the backlash that it perceived as well. A lot of our business community, particularly small business community, uses TikTok. A lot of younger people are on TikTok. Everybody's on TikTok watching videos and watching their content. So I think it's a very popular platform that's going to be taken away. Now, the net result of that is going to be different depending upon what sector you're in. If you're a small business owner and you're leveraging TikTok content to get customers, that's going to be a different conversation than maybe a PR person who's doing content creation for a client.

(06:07):

And so I think that a lot of the people that are in the small business world, what they're looking at is to migrate their customers elsewhere. I think those that are in the communications field, including public relations, they're looking at what is the platform that we need to be on, and also how is this TikTok going to play out? Do we still populate content on it? Do we abandon it? Do we have a contingency plan? And I think those are conversations going around a lot of offices today in the world of communications and public relations

Doug Downs (06:37):

Because the drop dead date is January, 2025, if I'm not mistaken.

Cayce Myers (06:42):

Yes. And there's a divestiture, so we call it a TikTok ban. It's a divestiture, which is in effect a ban because they say they will not divest, but they've given them a certain duration of time with an opportunity for an extension of that time to find a buyer. Now, TikTok and by dance that owns TikTok says they're not going to sell. So is in effect a ban on TikTok. However, when you're looking at that kind of situation, there's some caveats there. There's obviously litigation that's going to center around this that will be protracted and that may end up having some stays that may end up creating some delay in sort of the implementation, particularly when you get into the appeals process, which is a much longer process than the trial process is even. So you have the opportunity for this to not just be a year long issue. It may be several years.

Doug Downs (07:42):

So just in layman's terms, information, not for dummies, but for Dougie, make it that simple. Why is this happening just because it's a Chinese company?

Cayce Myers (07:53):

That's the main reason. The idea is that there's a national security threat with having a platform owned by a Chinese based company in which the law in China can require them to provide data to the government. And it's viewed as a negative in our country because the thought is that this could be used for nefarious purposes. This data can be used for nefarious purposes, and we don't want to have a foreign country that has a media presence in this country that can really engage in deception or engage in public commentary that really shapes public opinion in a way that skews the reality of what the truth is. And that's the underlying basis of why this came about. And there are a lot of people who are very fearful that these sort of presence of TikTok can change public debate, public opinion and attitude. And in the age of disinformation, this is really one of the first big things that we've seen to combat what is perceived to be disinformation, particularly by a foreign government.

Doug Downs (09:03):

And I do understand and respect that very, very much. And I would say in other countries there are at least indicators that there has been some level of Chinese governments interference or action play in elections, for example, here in Canada. There have certainly been different investigations into something like that. On the other hand, to play devil's advocate, what information is TikTok gathering from me that Instagram or anything involved with Meta is not?

Cayce Myers (09:35):

Well, that's a great question. I mean, the critique is that there's so much data out there. If we're really talking about data collection and data dissemination, the social media platforms that exist currently all gather data, there's a ton of it that's being freely given away by the users that you're incentivized to really give your data away in order to have a maximized experience on the platforms. And so if a nefarious group wants data, they can find it. They don't have to necessarily create a platform to do it. It's out there to be had. And it's something that I think has become top of mind, I think for a lot of people of how much privacy are they private information are they putting out there?

Doug Downs (10:22):

How do you, TikTok, ByteDance rather is fighting back with constitutional challenges to this legislation. How do you interpret those challenges? And what precedent do the past attempts to ban TikTok, which in the United States have failed? Is too strong a word because you can't use TikTok on a government device as it is in many countries. How do past precedent attempts set the stage for the current situation?

Cayce Myers (10:53):

Well, there was a state attempt to ban TikTok, and that was something that has been in litigation. It hasn't been fully resolved, but there was a court order that said that this raises a lot of First Amendment issues and that has been put on hold. President Trump issued an executive order about TikTok, but the Biden administration, this is at the tail end of 2020. The Biden administration did not continue with that. So there's been some attempts, but we've never seen a full fledged attempt with congressional action of law. That's a federal law now and then that being challenged through the federal appellate courts. Now, what I think is going to happen is that there's going to be First Amendment challenges, and it's going to center around content specific speech regulation, which requires the government to show strict scrutiny. And strict scrutiny is a heightened standard that requires the government to show that there is a compelling state interest for creating this law.

(11:53):

Now, most of the times those types of challenges, the government loses because compelling interest is so high of a standard, but in this situation, national security would be the compelling interest. And so there's an argument there that would succeed. There's another kind of corollary challenge I think out there, a bill of attainder, and I talk about that in that IPR article that I wrote a few weeks back that talks about this is a specific targeting of a company. I think that's a weaker argument. Most people in the kind of the legal analysis world think that's a weaker argument. So I think this is one of those things that will be a First Amendment challenge. It'll be a question around strict scrutiny analysis. And I think likely because the original jurisdiction for this law lies in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, this will probably get to the United States Supreme Court. And if I were to make a guess, I think that the law will probably be upheld. There are people that disagree with that, and I would not say that with a hundred percent certitude, but I think that there's a good chance.

Doug Downs (13:00):

So if the ban is enforced, which platforms, social media platforms are going to win from this naturally, I think of Instagram. But is that necessarily the case? What should PR professionals start to do here?

Cayce Myers (13:13):

I think that the natural winners are those interfaces that are going to look the most like a TikTok, like an Instagram, and then probably YouTube, those visual video-based platforms. But I would say in general, all social media probably wins when a major competitor is eliminated because people are going to go somewhere to do their communication. I think that likely what you see, a lot of people on TikTok are already on Instagram, so that may make that platform more outsized to its importance. It may also make Meta a bigger company, a more successful company than it already is because that's where people are. It's a similar interface. It's a similar type of experience looking at short form videos and music and things like that. So one of the things that I would also suspect is that when this transfer happens, certain industries that kind of leverage TikTok, so for instance, the music industry really uses TikTok a lot for both recruitment and travel. Yes. And travel uses TikTok a lot, big time. You may see those companies or those types of companies have a bigger presence than before on some of these other social platforms like Instagram.

Doug Downs (14:34):

And I'll just be blunt, I am still in shock that it would go this far, and I'm not. The short of it is I'm not necessarily crazy about the idea of a ban for the Pandora's Box that it opens up with full respect to privacy and national security concerns. But we seem to be shifting more control to two companies, Meta and Google, which owns YouTube. It feels like we're narrowing the number of voices we have for the narrative, and that's not necessarily good.

Cayce Myers (15:08):

Absolutely. It used to be that we were talking about when we talked about go back to the days of Legacy media, we had very limited outlets. You had the three big networks. We're kind of entering a space where there's like the three or two big social media companies and then after that as everybody else, and they don't really compete on the same plane. So the idea of having viewpoint diversity from the experience of just the platform itself suffers, I think, in that regard. And it does raise some questions also around antitrust and around the idea that you have a few companies, multi-billion dollar companies that are controlling vast platforms of communication that are used by everyone. And what does that really mean for communication? What does that mean for information? What does that mean in terms of the outsized power of those companies, particularly within the democratic process? And so those are some legitimate concerns people have. Kind of on the flip side of if we are kind of constraining social media in terms of the variety of it, what does that mean in terms of just society in general and the way that people can find out information?

Doug Downs (16:22):

Well, let's dig into that. So as a PR pro, what are the trends and indicators that I should be watching to stay ahead of these changing regulations and laws around social media and data privacy?

Cayce Myers (16:34):

Well, I think that there's a few things that you can stay ahead of. One is that if you look at certain agencies, they have really kind of delved into the social media regulation realm, particularly like the Federal Trade Commission. If you're looking at anything with influencers, they have really gotten into influencer regulation very heavily. But interestingly enough, states have gotten into the regulation of social media in a way that is a little unusual. We think about communication regulation as being a federal issue. But states have stepped up into that realm. And in fact, one of the first bands of TikTok was a state law, not a federal law. So if you look at different states and how they're handling privacy, and it kind of is a range. So you have some states that are very almost adopting a standard, what you would see in the eu.

(17:19):

And then you have states that are trying to do more like what this federal law did about banning platforms or constraining platforms. There's some new laws that are coming out in that realm. And so we have to kind of watch some of the places that we wouldn't normally watch. But again, when we're talking about social, one of the big things, the big themes that have emerged is that we are very concerned about privacy. They're very concerned about transparency. They're very concerned about disinformation and how we're going to regulate that while also allowing these platforms to exist and flourish because United States is a leader in the realm of digital technology and they want to remain as such. And if you have a lot of laws that constricted, that doesn't necessarily lead for much innovation.

Doug Downs (18:07):

What do you anticipate might happen if the US leads the way bans, TikTok? Well, actually India has led the way. India has done this first. Yes. But the United States, it's a big voice in all industries. What happens from a global perspective after that? How do you think the dominoes fall from

Cayce Myers (18:24):

Here? Well, in terms of TikTok, I think that TikTok remains and it exists. And I think that there's a lot of discussion of could you access it by going to another country or could you get some sort of VPN access or something like that? And that's all speculative right now. We don't know if a person can access it. For instance, if I lived on the border of Canada and New York, could I go into Canada and get my update or whatever? And then there's some discussion around that, and there's also some discussion around if the band goes into place, does it attach to the account where the account was created? Of course, when you create your account, you put United States, and so that may be no workaround

Doug Downs (19:08):

There. Let's create a new account. Well,

Cayce Myers (19:09):

I suppose people could do that if they're in a situation where they could create a new account. So I don't think that TikTok goes away in terms of just globally. I think in the United States, what will happen is a degradation of the platform because of the lack of updates. And then what will happen is that eventually that platform just disintegrates as a major player within the communication field, and no one, particularly on the corporate side of things or major organizations, they're not going to be in that space trying to do workarounds. And so the content's going to be degraded as well. In terms of the larger social media regulations, I think that we should expect to see more regulations around privacy. I think we should expect to see more regulations around trying to combat disinformation. Disinformation is a tough thing to regulate in the states because you have a First Amendment, and the First Amendment has no protection for certain things like fighting words, obscenity, defamation, but disinformation is a little different.

(20:16):

It's a general term, and it exists on the continuum from, I believe in, I don't know, let's say you had a disinformation campaign where someone believes in Bigfoot and then it goes all the way to disinformation about vaccines. So it exists on this wide continuum of seriousness. And so what I would say is that it's an inartful attempt to try to combat that with a lot of federal regulation. And what I think would likely occur is that these platforms that we've talked about that are growing in power will create community standard rules, and they already have them that combats disinformation, combats that kind of regulation. And you'll see different platforms have different types of communication content, and we may find it's just like with Twitter now X, those regulations in that platform may change the nature of that platform and people will be on certain platforms based on that.

Doug Downs (21:12):

Yeah, it might open up the door for new platforms to exist, which are happening all the time. Right.

Cayce Myers (21:19):

That's an interesting point. So one of the things that you watch with federal regulation, and this is something that this is not just with social, this is with every controlled industry like trains, planes, et cetera, is the more regulation that emerges, the better it is for the preexisting companies because then those companies have infrastructure to implement the regulation. The harder it is to enter the marketplace with a highly regulated market as a startup. And so it is in effect sometimes regulation helps industry continue control of industry. And if you can see that in a lot of different sectors where they will argue for regulation, that seems like, well, that seems counterintuitive that they would want to be regulated more, but that regulation actually makes them more powerful in a way because it squeezes out a competitor that would have a much harder time entering that market, particularly with in a heavily regulated sense.

Doug Downs (22:21):

Yeah, utilities come to mind right away. That's a perfect example of

Cayce Myers (22:24):

That. Exactly. Utilities is a perfect example.

Doug Downs (22:27):

Last thoughts on this issue.

Cayce Myers (22:29):

I think that this is going to be an ongoing issue. TikTok is going to not be something that's resolved the next nine months or 12 months even. I think there's going to be protracted litigation. I think it's going to be an indicator of perhaps larger international discussions, larger discussions about international owners of media and how they have presence in the United States. I think it's also going to be an area where we see much more discussion in the federal government and the state governments about privacy and about the role of government regulation in social media and social media regulation, both in terms of content and in terms of just sort of the structure of the media itself and who's allowed to post and how they're allowed to leverage that platform. We've kind of reached an age where social is no longer new media. It has become a dominant force within our society, and I think that the government recognizes that, and that's why they're entering into this space and a much more aggressive fashion.

Doug Downs (23:34):

Excellent. Really appreciate your time today, Cayce.

Cayce Myers (23:37):

Thank you.

Doug Downs (23:39):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Cayce Myers, we've got some contact information in the show notes, stories and strategies as a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. We read those on the podcast. Follow us on one of our social media channels, including TikTok for now. And lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.