TikTok CEO Goes to Washington With a Disparate Band of Allies

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) was planning to host a press conference Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. EST on Capitol Hill with more than 20 TikTok creators to oppose the threat of a ban on the short-form video app. The list of TikTok allies includes baker Robert Lucas, filmmaker David Ma and science teacher Nancy Bullard.

But TikTok has few allies willing to stump for its survival—at least, publicly—as its foes warn the app poses a data security risk because of its China-based parent company.

“I don’t see many allies [in Washington],” said Gillian Diebold, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Information of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit think tank whose board members include executives at Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft. “There is more quiet support.”