If TikTok, the popular social media app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, wanted to demonstrate why it is imperative that the federal government force ByteDance to sell the app to an entity not affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, it could not have done better than the misbegotten influence campaign it tried on the day a House committee was slated to vote on legislation that would do that.

On March 7, ahead of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s scheduled meeting on legislation that would either force ByteDance to sell TikTok or ban the app from web hosting services in the United States, TikTok pushed a message out to millions of U.S. users, directing them to call Congress and “stop a TikTok shutdown.”