Loath as I Am to Agree With Marjorie Taylor Greene…

What could be even more impactful than the non-ban ban, though, is the way it is enforced. The bill applies to any website or application with over a million monthly visitors that allows users to create accounts and share content. If it has so much as a comments section, it counts. No one is even sure how many apps the bill could ban as soon as it gets signed.

That would be up to the White House. The bill gives the president the authority to determine whether an app controlled by a foreign adversary poses a “significant threat to the national security of the United States.” It also requires him to approve its sale, which means that even if a given tech company tried to cooperate, he could stonewall indefinitely to effectively ban the app anyway.

Then there’s the vagueness of what constitutes “control” by a foreign adversary. The bill leaves that up to interpretation too. The company doesn’t even have to be based in a foreign adversary country to have its apps banned—it just has to be “subject to the direction or control” of someone who is.

As one technology lawyer put it: “The President really has the unchecked power to put another app on this list.”

The bill’s opponents include Democratic representatives like Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley and would rather protect data privacy with a more “narrowly tailored law.” Jamaal Bowman thinks the bill is driven by “xenophobic anti-China rhetoric,” while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants information about the alleged security risks to be made public. “This is putting the cart before the horse,” she said, on TikTok.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Nancy Mace thinks it is “not the role of government to ban apps from the app store.” Matt Gaetz says the bill is “rushed” and “overbroad.” Marjorie Taylor Greene worries it would “open Pandora’s box” and lead to more censorship down the line.

Loath as I am to agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene, giving the president near-unilateral authority to ban free-speech platforms could very well backfire—especially if that president is Donald Trump. Imagine handing that kind of power to the man who recently called Facebook an “enemy of the people,” who is known for harboring personal vendettas, and who owns a competing social media platform of his own. What could go wrong?

The concerns about TikTok are genuine, but so are the concerns of those opposing the bill. It would be more responsible—and more effective—to regulate how the company collects and uses Americans’ personal data. Last week, the Department of Justice sued to regulate Apple; the same could be done with TikTok.

Regulation would help curb misinformation, which spreads like wildfire on the app. It would also—as opposed to an outright ban—prevent backlash among young voters ahead of a close election. And it won’t set a precedent of unchecked executive power, so Trump can’t ban Twitch because he thinks its owner’s business interests in China count as foreign control.

One hundred and seventy million Americans use TikTok. That’s more than half the population, including one-third of adults and almost two-thirds of people under 30. Regulatory action would make the app safer to use, without banning one of the country’s most popular social media platforms—and angering most of the country in the process.