Over the past week, videos have appeared on TikTok from users across the United States.
They were all joking about the same thing: how the app's ties to China made it a national security threat. Many suggested that their TikTok accounts each had an agent of the Chinese government assigned to spy on them through the app – and that the users would miss their personal spies.
“May we meet again in another life,” one user wrote in a farewell video to Whitney Houston's cover of Dolly Parton's “I Will Always Love You.” The video featured an AI-generated image of a Chinese military officer.
The videos were just one way some of TikTok's 170 million monthly U.S. users responded as they prepared for the app to disappear from the country on Sunday.
The Supreme Court will rule on a federal law that required TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the app by Jan. 19 or risk a ban in the United States. US officials have said China could use TikTok to collect Americans' private data and spread classified disinformation. TikTok, which has said a sale is impossible and has challenged the law, is now waiting for the Supreme Court's response.
The possibility that the judges will uphold the law has created a palpable sense of sadness and dark humor in the app. Some users have posted videos suggesting ways to get around a ban using technological solutions. Others have downloaded another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as “Red Note,” to thumb their noses at the U.S. government's concerns about TikTok's ties to China.
The videos highlight the clash taking place online between the law, which Congress passed with widespread support last year, and regular TikTok users, who are upset that the app will soon disappear.
“A large part of my TikTok feed now consists of TikTokers making fun of the US government, and TikTokers thanking their Chinese spy as a form of mockery,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University and an expert on the field of global regulation of new technologies. “TikTokers realize that they are unlikely to be manipulated by anyone. They are actually quite sophisticated with the information they receive.”
TikTok declined to comment on users' references to its ties to China.
Some users aren't willing to give up the app — or their alleged spies — so easily.
According to a review by The New York Times, hundreds of TikTok videos from the past week cataloged how teens could continue using the app in the United States. One of the most popular methods described is using a VPN, or virtual private network, which can mask a user's location and give the impression that the person is somewhere else.
“They can't actually ban TikTok in the US because VPNs aren't banned,” Sasha Casey, a TikTok user, said in a recent video that was liked more than 60,000 times. “Use a VPN. And send a picture to Congress while you do that, because that's what I'm going to do.”
While VPNs can give the impression that a phone, laptop or other electronic device is in a remote location, it's not clear whether the technology can bypass the ban. A device's real location is stored in many places, including the app store used to download TikTok.
TikTok fans also appear to be behind the sudden rise in popularity of Xiaohongshu, the most downloaded free app on Tuesday and Wednesday in the US Apple Store. Hundreds of millions of people in China use the app, which, like TikTok, features short videos and text-based messages. Xiaohongshu means 'little red book' in Mandarin.
Mr Chander expects the Supreme Court to uphold the ban law this week, although he believes TikTok has the winning case. He said the downloads of Red Note and the Chinese spy memes showed that many Americans disagreed with their government's security concerns, especially at the expense of freedom of expression.
“When the United States shuts down a massive free speech service that our democratic allies have not shut down, we will become the censor and put ourselves in the unusual position of silencing speech,” Mr. Chander said. “It will make Americans who use TikTok really distrustful of the U.S. government because it has their best interests at heart.”
