ByteDance's app CapCut, a core part of American internet culture and the creator economy, could be banned from the US as part of a potential nationwide TikTok ban.
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TThe controversial law, which could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok from January next year, also threatens to kill other apps from parent company ByteDance, including CapCut, an AI video-editing app that is just as popular in the U.S. as TikTok but has not come under as much scrutiny.
The Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act, signed by President Joe Biden in April, bans ByteDance, TikTok and other apps run by companies “owned or controlled by foreign adversaries” unless they sell their U.S. businesses to Americans within nine months. The White House and Congress say the purpose is to address national security concerns that TikTok could be used to surveil Americans, access sensitive data and manipulate what Americans see and say. But the law extends far beyond ByteDance's best-known app, potentially banning several other apps from the China-based tech giant, a sign that lawmakers are concerned about those apps' data and surveillance practices, too.
CapCut is the largest of these apps, a platform similar to Apple's iMovie that lets people edit videos on their phones and create memes to post online or send to friends. It also caters to corporate clients' needs with CapCut for Business. After TikTok, CapCut is perhaps ByteDance's most popular app in the U.S. and around the world. It was used by 500 million people worldwide last year, and in the U.S., it was downloaded nearly 44.7 million times, compared to TikTok's 45 million, according to app analytics firm Data.ai. (CapCut also benefits from being promoted throughout TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users, and the fact that you don't need to own TikTok to use it.)
TikTok was downloaded 45 million times in the U.S. last year. CapCut was downloaded nearly 44.7 million times.
CapCut has become a core part of American internet culture, responsible for some of today's most talked-about moments on and off TikTok. Despite being free, Americans spent an estimated $24.6 million last year purchasing subscriptions and special editing features for the app, making the U.S. the largest spending market after China, according to Data.ai. Last fall, CapCut became the second ByteDance app to surpass $100 million in global consumer spending. Since its U.S. launch in 2020, CapCut has steadily climbed the rankings of Apple and Google's U.S. app stores, and will be the third most downloaded non-game app by 2023, according to Data.ai. It trails only Temu (#1), a shopping app also owned by a Chinese company, and TikTok (#2).
But with China hawks in Washington having spent the better part of four years focused on ByteDance's magnum opus, CapCut, you'd never know it being as widely used as TikTok. As a video-editing software, CapCut doesn't have TikTok's obvious content problems. Still, some argue that the trove of valuable personal data that CapCut collects, and the surveillance it receives from ByteDance executives in China (under a plan called “Project Texas”), is just as worrisome as TikTok.
“TikTok has committed significant resources to keeping its information out of China and claims that a separate legal entity operates TikTok in the U.S., but CapCut has no such entity — it is simply operated directly by ByteDance in China,” said Jeannie Evans, a partner at law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, which is representing CapCut users in a class action lawsuit alleging that the company illegally stole and profited from sensitive information, including what users look like and their exact location.
The lawsuit alleges that ByteDance violated federal and state consumer protection and privacy laws. Evans says the biometric, location, messaging and other data collected by CapCat goes far beyond what's necessary to run the app, and isn't clearly disclosed, raising questions about who is using it and what it's being used for.
Many are using CapCut “templates” to join trends that are exploding on social media. In this TikTok post, actress Reese Witherspoon uses CapCut’s AI to time travel to the 1930s.
Alexandra S. Levin via TikTok
“You can change your email address, your phone number, all of these things… [but] “You can't change your face, your eyes or your voice,” she said. “As with TikTok, we know that Chinese law requires Chinese companies to provide all data to the Chinese government…that's not stated in their privacy policies.” Hagens Berman filed an updated complaint in February (originally filed last summer in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois), and ByteDance filed a motion to dismiss. ByteDance and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.
The ownership and leadership issues that have plagued TikTok, including the extent to which the company's operations extend to its upper echelons in China, also extend to CapCut. While TikTok CEO Shou Zhu lives in Singapore, CapCut is run by ByteDance staff in China, including Kelly Zhang Nan, who until recently was CEO of TikTok's Chinese sister app, Douyin, and now helms CapCut and its Chinese counterpart, Jianying, according to a report from The Information.
Despite this, the cap cuts have received little attention in Washington. In 2023, the then-consumer protection co-leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee, Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, briefly questioned the cap cuts in a letter to TikTok's CEO. ForbesMeanwhile, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, mentioned the tool casually during a recent hearing on a proposed ban, but most lawmakers who have spoken publicly about their concerns about TikTok have not mentioned it, even as it remains entangled in government divestiture legislation.
The prevalence of CapCut is part of ByteDance's argument in its lawsuit against the US government for why the new law is unconstitutional: it would remove all ByteDance apps available in the US, not just the one in question, and lawmakers have failed to show how other apps raise the national security concerns they claim exist with TikTok.
TikTok and ByteDance said in their lawsuit that the law is “overbroad because it applies to other ByteDance-owned applications that they have not shown, and cannot show, pose the risks Congress clearly seeks to address.”
“The Government has never alleged that all, or even substantially all, the content on TikTok (or any other ByteDance-owned app) is disinformation, misinformation, or propaganda,” the complaint states. “Yet this Act blocks all speech on ByteDance-owned apps, anywhere, at any time, in any manner. This is a classic example of overreach.”
Have a tip about CapCut, ByteDance, TikTok, or social media in general? Contact Alexandra S. Levine securely on Signal/WhatsApp (310) 526–1242 or email alevine@forbes.com.
Rex Booth, a former director of the White House cyber office, said there is a risk that the Chinese government could get information that CapCut users are producing content the government disapproves of, but that it pales in comparison to the concerns about TikTok and even those concerns do not warrant blocking the app.
Booth said that because TikTok (unlike CapCut) is essentially a social media platform, the insights it could provide about both individuals and entire networks of people could theoretically be even more useful for intelligence gathering. Without the network of social connections that's a key component of CapCut, “I think the value for intelligence agencies to spy through CapCut would be significantly reduced,” he said. Forbes“If the problem we're trying to solve is the possibility of information being illegally extracted through these apps, then in the case of TikTok, that risk is much higher.”
But he called the government's arguments in support of the TikTok ban a “relatively weak defense” and warned that shutting down all ByteDance apps nationwide would have “unintended consequences.” For example, other adversaries and allies may see the move as not so different from China's own moves to block US apps, which the US has criticized as a dangerous form of censorship.
“There is a risk that in the future this could encourage other governments or entities to take similar measures against what they see as our digital dominance,” said Booth, who is also a former head of threat analysis at the government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “It's quite possible that the China of the world will not only, first, view us through a lens of hypocrisy, but second, potentially take action against us… [and] A broader range of countries around the world, including our allies, will likely do the same.”
