Is there actually a ban on US social media platforms in China?
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others were operating in China, but when China imposed more and more censorship requirements on all social media platforms in China regardless of whether or not they were domestic or foreign and required all of them to turn over user details to the government many chose not to comply, and then China blocked them.
If a US social media platform were willing to implement China's censorship and disclosure requirements for its Chinese operations would they be able to go back? As far as I know we don't know because none of them have tried.
Note that TikTok as we know it is itself not available in China. The original app that became TikTok is in China, but when they wanted to expand to the rest of the world they split it into two companies and the apps diverged. Both companies are owned by ByteDance.
That's probably the approach a US social media company would need to take to try to get back into China.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others were operating in China, but when China imposed more and more censorship requirements on all social media platforms in China regardless of whether or not they were domestic or foreign and required all of them to turn over user details to the government many chose not to comply, and then China blocked them.
If a US social media platform were willing to implement China's censorship and disclosure requirements for its Chinese operations would they be able to go back? As far as I know we don't know because none of them have tried.
Note that TikTok as we know it is itself not available in China. The original app that became TikTok is in China, but when they wanted to expand to the rest of the world they split it into two companies and the apps diverged. Both companies are owned by ByteDance.
That's probably the approach a US social media company would need to take to try to get back into China.