A purportedly leaked cable that showed Biden administration officials exempting some people from the upcoming TikTok ban seemed to have a clear message: banned for thee, but not for me.
The exemptions. In recent days, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein published an internal cable dated Jan. 6, 2025 that reportedly carved out two exemptions to the TikTok ban for diplomats at the State Department:
- Contractors that carry out public monitoring on TikTok: This would allow contractors to monitor and analyze “foreign user discourse.” In other words, it allows contractors to snoop and check out what local users are talking about.
- Contracted digital content creators that use TikTok: This exemption was more interesting, given that it acknowledged the interest of U.S. diplomats to contract digital content creators on TikTok to “produce and disseminate content on the Department’s work.”
The cable appears to be signed by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
You can read the cable in full on Klippenstein’s website. I reached out to the State Department on Thursday morning to confirm the authenticity of the cable but didn’t immediately receive a response.
What it means. As noted by Klippenstein, the cable, if authentic, highlights the double-standard employed by the U.S. government.
At home, government officials have ranted and railed against the national security threat posed by TikTok’s ties to China and how the Asian country could theoretically use the app to influence American public opinion. It’s important to point out that to date, there’s no public evidence that China has tried to use TikTok for this purpose.
However, the cable shows that the U.S. government is interested in using TikTok the exact way it claims China could use it.
“The platform, now one of the most downloaded digital platforms globally, is increasingly a primary source of news for audiences around the world — including those under 35 years of age, a critical demographic for [public diplomacy] engagement,” the document reads. “In the near term, conversations on the platform shape the policy environment in which we operate; longer-term, they are shaping the perceptions of a generation of foreign audiences.”
Stoking the fire. The leaked cable is likely to piss off Americans unhappy over the TikTok ban even more. TikTok has more than 150 million users in the U.S., many of whom rely on the app for their livelihood, to promote their business, or simply for entertainment.
Earlier this week, a swath of U.S. TikTok users started signing up for the Chinese social media app RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu in Mandarin, as an act of protest. Some called themselves “TikTok refugees.” It seemed to be a way to basically say, “Fine, ban our favorite app. We’ll go use another Chinese app.” RedNote is not TikTok, though, and can be more accurately described as a hybrid of Instagram and Pinterest.
More than 700,000 people signed up for RedNote in just two days this week, Reuters reported, causing the app's developers to purportedly scramble to moderate English-language content and build translation tools. RedNote has been the number one most downloaded app in Apple and Google’s U.S. stores for three days in a row this week.
The ban liked by no one in politics. With just days before the ban goes into effect, the Biden administration is reportedly looking into ways to keep the app available, according to NBC.
“Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday,” an unnamed administration official told the outlet on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, a TikTok hater turned TikTok supporter, is purportedly also looking into signing an executive order to suspend the ban for 90 days.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said last month.
Images | visuals | Solen Feyissa
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