President Joe Biden’s 2024 electoral campaign has extended its outreach to TikTok, despite previous expressions of concern regarding the platform’s implications for national security, which prompted its prohibition on federal devices.
It has been clarified by aides that President Biden is not anticipated to establish a personal presence on the platform, nor are other members of his administration expected to do so. Instead, the campaign’s TikTok account will be administered exclusively by the campaign team, aiming to engage with voters within the increasingly diverse American populace, particularly as younger demographics diverge from conventional social media platforms. The inaugural post notably depicted the president participating in a Super Bowl-related quiz, and made reference to a recent political conspiracy theory involving the music artist Taylor Swift.
Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have issued warnings regarding the potential for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to share user data—including browsing history, geolocation, and biometric identifiers—with the authoritarian government of China. In response, President Biden instigated a ban in 2022 on the utilization of TikTok by the approximately 4 million federal government employees on devices owned by government agencies, with limited exemptions for law enforcement, national security, and security research endeavors. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an influential and secretive body, has been engaged in an extensive review of the application for several years.
Campaign officials have asserted their implementation of advanced security measures and protocols to safeguard against potential risks. However, the specifics of these measures, including whether they are primarily intended to protect campaign data or the privacy of users, have not been disclosed.
China enacted legislation in 2017 mandating companies to furnish the government with any personal data deemed pertinent to national security. While there exists no substantiated evidence of TikTok complying with such directives, apprehensions persist due to the extensive volume of user data amassed by the platform, akin to other social media entities.
The Biden campaign has announced its intention to regularly disseminate content through the BidenHQ account on TikTok. Additionally, the campaign maintains a presence on various other social media platforms, including Meta’s Threads, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Truth Social—a platform endorsed by the prominent Republican figure Donald Trump.
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Acknowledging the evolving media landscape, the president’s campaign has strategically emphasized engagements on social media platforms and conducted smaller-scale events featuring the president to effectively target demographics less inclined toward traditional media outlets. Concurrently, efforts to collaborate with social media influencers have been intensified, with the objective of amplifying the president’s messaging across various online platforms.
