Joe Biden’s re-election campaign plans to continue using TikTok, a campaign official said on Wednesday, shortly after the US president signed a law that could ban the app if its Chinese owner is unable to divest itself of the business.
The decision comes as many young and left-leaning voters, a significant portion of the short video app’s user base, are agitated over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza and protests have escalated at universities across the country. country.
“A fragmented media environment requires us to show up and meet voters where they are, and that includes the Internet. TikTok is one of the many places we are making sure our content is seen by voters,” said a Biden campaign official who declined to be identified.
The campaign will use “enhanced security measures” when using the app, according to the official. Biden’s campaign team is not employed by the government and does not deal with national security issues, so they are allowed to have the app on their phones, campaign officials have previously said.
The Biden campaign’s TikTok account, @bidenhq, has posted about 120 videos and has more than 306,000 followers, and routinely posts videos of Biden there even as the White House says TikTok raises “legitimate national security concerns.”
TikTok will challenge the bill on First Amendment grounds and the company’s chief executive said on Wednesday that he hopes to win a lawsuit to block the legislation.
The four-year fight over TikTok is an important front in a battle over the internet and technology between Washington and Beijing.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is not on the app, said earlier this week that Biden was responsible if a ban were imposed, urging voters to pay attention. When he was president in 2020, Trump tried to ban TikTok over national security concerns, but was blocked by the courts.
Biden campaign advisers do not expect the decision to hurt them with young voters and expect a lengthy legal fight to determine the app’s fate and delay any potential ban.
“Reducing the youth vote to the use of a social media app is unserious, inaccurate and insulting: in election after election, young people continue to show us that they understand the risks of this moment,” said the campaign spokesperson by Biden Seth Schuster.
In March, the campaign announced that it had launched its largest voter outreach program yet, with support from 15 youth organizations that have endorsed Biden.
The new law gives TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, nine months to sell the app or face a ban in the US. The president could grant a one-time 90-day extension, but even without it, the ban could not begin before January.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh)
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