TikTok Ban Debate Moves From Washington to Main Street

Opposing the proposal is a councilwoman who has already announced her mayoral bid. She says Rapid City has bigger problems to solve, such as crime and drugs. She also says there is little evidence that TikTok poses a threat.

The two sides are squaring off amid a groundswell of moves by federal and state politicians to ban the popular social-media app on government-issued devices. Congress is also considering a bill that would ban TikTok across the country.

At the heart of the issue is TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd. U.S. officials say the Chinese government could order TikTok to collect data on American users or to control what videos Americans view on the app. TikTok has said it would refuse such an order, while Beijing has said U.S. officials are spreading misinformation about TikTok.

The moves are reminiscent of the bans and other restrictions slapped on another Chinese tech giant, Huawei Technologies Co. The Trump and Biden administrations, alleging similar national-security issues, used export controls and diplomacy to effectively ban the cellular-equipment maker in the U.S. and to lobby allied countries to do the same.

The big difference with TikTok? It has more than 100 million American users, many of them young. That popularity threatens to expand the public debate over any moves against the app beyond the national-security issues that ensnared Huawei.

The Biden administration and TikTok have been conducting closed-door negotiations about how TikTok can continue operating in the U.S. A recent Senate proposal to ban TikTok from government devices passed unanimously, while more than a dozen governors have also recently enacted similar orders at a state level.

The Senate proposal and those governors’ orders, however, have been enacted without substantive public hearings or debate. But in Rapid City—with a population of 76,000, making it South Dakota’s second-largest city after Sioux Falls—discussions over a ban have become a potential election issue.

Jason Salamun,

the city’s councilman for Ward 3, said his interest in the topic was piqued in September, when South Dakota’s Republican Congressman,

Dusty Johnson,

introduced the “Block the Tok Act,” which among other things would ban the installation of TikTok from federal devices.

Then in November, South Dakota Gov.

Kristi Noem,

a Republican, issued an executive order banning state agencies, employees and contractors from using TikTok on state devices. Mr. Salamun said that action inspired him to look into doing something similar for Rapid City. He said he talked to the governor’s staff to better understand the issue and studied warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“With these agencies and our Congress and state saying it’s a threat, it’s something we should be having a conversation about,” Mr. Salamun said. “I just think it’s logical.”

Some peers on Rapid City’s 10-person council believe something else is motivating him, too: They believe he wants to run in June’s nonpartisan mayoral election. “It’s an attention grabber,” said Councilman

Ritchie Nordstrom.

Mr. Salamun, a conservative, said he hasn’t yet decided whether to run for mayor, but that the TikTok proposal is about security, not politics.

As Mr. Salamun tried to drum up support for his proposal, another council member said she didn’t believe it. “I didn’t think he was serious,” said

Laura Armstrong,

who recently announced her own mayoral bid. She said there are bigger issues the city needs to deal with. “We have an increase in crime,” said Ms. Armstrong, who calls herself a centrist Democrat. “We have an issue with meth.”

She said once she realized the proposal was serious, she researched the potential ramifications. Among the things she found, the city’s exhibition center could lose business because contracts with musicians require the venue to promote gigs via TikTok, she said.

The city’s fire and police departments use TikTok to recruit, and the Solid Waste department has an official TikTok account, with about 443 followers as of last week. One popular video reminded residents to place yard-waste bags at least 4 feet away from trash containers, because a garbage truck’s mechanical arm can accidentally rip bags open.

Ms. Armstrong said she isn’t convinced TikTok poses a security threat that requires the city council’s intervention. “With lack of evidence, it’s almost like Chicken Little: ‘The sky is falling!’” Ms. Armstrong said at a Dec. 28 meeting of the city council’s legal-and-finance committee, which considered the proposal. She said she was also concerned that banning city agencies from TikTok would make it harder for the government to interact with young people.

That meeting ended with Mr. Salamun winning the first round. The committee voted 3-2 to advance the proposal to the Tuesday council meeting.

Write to Stu Woo at [email protected]