WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s campaign will not have a TikTok account, a platform his administration has deemed a national security threat, but his re-election effort still plans to have a presence on the popular video-sharing site, according to three sources familiar with the decision.
The Biden administration hasn't ruled out banning the app entirely in the U.S. — a move polls have found could upset the platform's millions of users, many of whom are young, risking their support for the president's re-election.
The 2024 campaign is also aware that opting to ignore the platform entirely could come with political risks.
The White House has a track record of leaning on influencers and surrogates to maintain a presence on the social media site without having to maintain an account. The campaign is expected to do the same. That means campaign officials, surrogates and even the president could appear on TikTok, while the official 2024 operation can say it’s technically not on the platform.
That was how Biden’s 2020 campaign navigated the tension between his position that TikTok poses national security risks and his team’s recognition that reaching the app’s more than 150 million American users is important.
While the campaign has decided against using the app, it hasn't discouraged TikTok for other political entities.
The Democratic National Committee, for instance, which is leading the bulk of Biden’s 2024 effort, has an active TikTok account. Building Back Together, a dark money group supporting Biden’s legislative agenda, also has one.
Both plan to invest time and money on engaging TikTok creators and users with large followings, according to a source close to the campaign. The source said Biden’s team believes that coordination will be enough to reach young voters, whose turnout is seen as critical to helping the president win another four years in the White House.
The Biden administration is conducting an internal review of the national security concerns administration officials have said are raised by TikTok, whose parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese-owned. Officials have argued that the Chinese government could access the data of millions of TikTok’s American users for nefarious purposes. They have also expressed concerns that because the app’s algorithm is controlled by a Chinese company, it could be manipulated by the Chinese government to mount foreign influence campaigns with American users.
ByteDance has said those concerns are unfounded and has for several years been working with the Biden administration to come up with a resolution that would store American users’ data inside the U.S., an effort known as Project Texas. The Biden administration earlier this year told TikTok that the solution isn’t sufficient and that the company’s Chinese owners need to divest or the app could face a ban in the U.S.
Late last year, Biden signed a law banning the use of TikTok on government devices. Montana banned the app in the state, which swiftly drew a legal challenge from TikTok that the Biden administration is closely watching.
The relationships the Biden team has already built with content creators are “durable assets” that would last, regardless of the platform’s future, a source familiar with the campaign’s thinking stressed.
Beyond that, certain popular stylistic choices on TikTok, such as sound and video effects, have already been reflected in current White House and campaign social media content, a nod to how influential the reach can be, the source added.
A DNC official said that the party headquarters has one dedicated device that is used to post content to the party’s TikTok account, which is isolated from all other DNC assets to mitigate the potential security risks of using the platform.
Since the 2020 election, the DNC has issued guidance to campaigns at all levels laying out the risks of using TikTok and urging them to take similar precautions. They are giving the same guidance to campaigns ahead of 2024, the official said, while adding that many do still see the platform as a valuable messaging tool.
A senior official on Biden’s last campaign said there was never even a debate before his 2019 announcement about having a TikTok account, given the security fears. That decision was made even as they prepared to enter a crowded Democratic primary against candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who were heavily targeting younger voters.
“There are a lot of ways to communicate to voters online. And removing one platform I don’t believe is a game-changer,” the official said.
The political blowback for the president if his administration were to ban TikTok in the U.S. could be less clearcut among young voters than expected, according to a new poll conducted by the pro-Biden group Gen-Z for Change and Morning Consult.
In the poll, which was reviewed by NBC News, a majority of Gen Z voters — 62% — say they would be less likely to vote for Biden if he bans TikTok. Millennial voters, however, are nearly split — 49% say they are more likely to vote for him and 51% say they are less likely to vote for Biden if he bans TikTok.
Nearly 20% of millennial voters say they would be much more likely to vote for him if he bans TikTok, while 12% of Gen Z voters say that. At the same time, Gen Z voters who say they would be less likely to vote for Biden if he bans TikTok are evenly split — 31% saying they’d be somewhat less likely and 31% saying they’d be much less likely, according to the poll, which was conducted in late April.
Still, banning TikTok could dampen enthusiasm among young voters to turn out to vote for the president in 2024, given that generally “young people aren’t really feeling heard or seen or focused on by the Biden administration,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, founder of Gen-Z for Change, who noted that Biden and his White House have used TikTok and users like himself to get their message out.
