Americans are less likely to support a potential ban on TikTok than they were 18 months ago, according to a new poll conducted ahead of a government deadline next year that could force the app to be sold or banned in the U.S.
Just 32% of U.S. adults support banning TikTok, according to Pew Research survey data released Thursday. Last fall, 38% supported the measure, and by March 2023, the number was 50%.
At the same time, half of Americans now believe a TikTok ban is “very or somewhat unlikely.”
The survey also found that many Americans have changed their views on TikTok over the past 18 months, including in the past five months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed a law requiring TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the app or face a possible ban in the country.
US lawmakers have expressed concerns about privacy and security issues associated with TikTok’s Chinese ownership.
The survey did not investigate why respondents changed their minds about the app.
Former President Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok in 2020, publicly changed his mind and created an account earlier this year. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump in the upcoming election, also used TikTok in her campaign. Even after signing the bill that could ban the app, President Biden also created a TikTok account.
The survey showed that views on the app remain divided along partisan lines. Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are more likely to view TikTok as a national security threat and nearly twice as likely to support a ban than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, Pew found.
Despite this, support for the ban has fallen by about 20 percentage points in both parties since March 2023.
ByteDance has until January to sell TikTok or face a ban in the U.S. under the law signed into law by Biden. That deadline can be extended by 90 days if a sale is in the works, and a lawsuit could further delay the implementation of the ban. TikTok has already filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government to try to overturn the law.
The Pew survey interviewed 10,658 adults between July 15 and Aug. 4, with a margin of error of about 1.2 percentage points.
With information from the South China Morning Post
Source: https://www.ocafezinho.com/2024/09/06/pesquisa-proibicao-do-tiktok-nos-eua-esta-perdendo-apoio-entre-os-americanos/
