New York.- Americans are less supportive of a potential ban on TikTok than they were 18 months ago, according to a new poll ahead of a government deadline next year to force a sale or ban the app from U.S. users.
Only 32 percent of American adults support banning TikTok, according to data from a Pew Research survey released Thursday.
Pew found that 38 percent of American adults supported a ban last fall and 50 percent were in favor by March 2023. Meanwhile, half of Americans now doubt TikTok will be banned, calling it “very or somewhat unlikely.”
The poll showed that many Americans have changed their stance on TikTok over the past year and a half, including in the past five months since President Joe Biden signed a law requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd, to divest its ownership in the app or face a ban in the country.
US lawmakers said they feared potential privacy and security issues related to TikTok’s Chinese ownership. The survey did not ask respondents why they had changed their views. Former President Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok while in office in 2020, publicly changed his mind about the app and created an account earlier this year. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump for president, has also used the app to campaign ahead of the US election in November. Despite signing the bill that could eventually ban the app, Biden also created an account. Researchers found that views on the app remain divided along party lines. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more likely to think TikTok threatens national security, and are nearly twice as likely to support a ban than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, Pew found. Still, support for the ban has fallen nearly 20 percentage points within each party since March 2023. ByteDance has until January to sell the app or face a ban in the United States, under the law signed by Biden. That deadline can be pushed back 90 days if a sale appears to be underway, and legal action could further delay the ban from taking effect. TikTok has sued the United States to try to overturn the law. Pew surveyed 10,658 adults from July 15 to Aug. 4. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percentage points.
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