Data Sovereignty in the Age of Digital Nationalism: The Case of TikTok and the Global Fragmentation of the Internet
Aysha Vear
I. Introduction
Social media has significantly changed the ways in which individuals both receive information and exchange it. As these applications and platforms have increasingly become part of the everyday lives of citizens and further incorporated into their daily interactions, the issue of social media regulation has been a clear focal point of legal and political discourse. Today there exists a growing concern about American citizens’ data with respect to Chinese influence and intrusion. Consequently, the House of Representatives presented a bill in 2024 to mitigate these fears. H.R. 7521 would force the foreign ownership of TikTok, a social media platform controlled by Chinese parent company ByteDance, to divest or face a broad federal ban.[1]
TikTok is centered on short videos created and uploaded by users who are able to create, share and interact with networks of content,[2] and it has quickly become one of the most popular apps in the United States.[3] It is “a mass marketplace of trends and ideas and has become a popular news source for young people”[4] with sixty-two percent of eighteen to twenty-nine year olds saying that they use the app[5] which reached a billion users in 2021.[6] The app got its start in the U.S. as an app called “Musical.ly” but was acquired by the Chinese company ByteDance in 2018 and rebranded as TikTok.[7] ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and it launched “Douyin,” the Chinese TikTok equivalent in 2016 prior to the “Musical.ly” acquisition. It is this affiliation with China and the Chinese app that flagged concern for United States government officials and this case represents a growing trend of national governments asserting greater control over digital platforms and the content which citizens consume.
This highlights a growing trend toward countries treating data governance as a national security issue. Data sovereignty is a concept that refers to “a state’s sovereign power to regulate not only cross-border flow of data through uses of internet filtering technologies and data localization mandates, but also speech activities . . . and access to technologies.”[8] Governments are introducing laws to prevent foreign control over citizen data, such as China’s Data Security Law and India’s restriction on data localization. Given that these laws have different aims and approaches to governance as well as shifting priorities, they have increased geopolitical competition between the U.S., China, and the EU. While data sovereignty is a necessary framework for global internet governance, its implementation must balance security concerns with the need to prevent a fragmentation of the internet as we know it. More countries are scrambling to control the flow of data in and out of their national borders and, as such, “the rise in data localization policies has been a contributing factor in declining internet freedom.”[9] This paper will explore the different approaches of the United States, China, and the European Union in controlling cross-border data flows. Next, looking through a specific lens at the TikTok forced divestiture and attacks on other Chinese entities, it will explore the growing trend of data sovereignty and attempt to find the balance in national security and digital openness. Finally, the paper will suggest possible solutions for the growing need for better collaboration in the digital sphere.
