The End of TikTok Could Be Closer Than We Think

Writen by Summer Adams

Since its launch in 2016 TikTok has taken the world by storm, with users in all demographics. The app has over 1.53 billion users worldwide, making it the most used and downloaded app in both 2022 and 2021, beating both Facebook and Instagram (Demandsage. com; Cyberclick.net). Tiktok is owned by ByteDance, a company founded by Zhang Yiming, making him the owner and founder of the app itself (Entrepreneur.com).

In recent news, however, it has become clear that governments worldwide have begun to consider banning the app, with concerns that it puts private and sensitive data about users, such as location, contact information, birthdays, or passwords, into the hands of the Chinese government.

While TikTok has repeatedly denied these allegations, stating that “the Chinese Communist Party has neither direct nor indirect control of ByteDance or TikTok,’’ some members of the American government are skeptical of this and believe that “China’s broad security laws would require ByteDance to share data with the Chinese government if asked” (Time. com). For this reason, governments are actively making decisions surrounding the banning of TikTok. On February 27th, The White House told federal agencies they had 30 days to delete the app from all government devices, which officially set the ban in place on March 29th. The United States is not the only country banning the app and as of March 2023 it has been banned on government devices by India, Canada, The European Union, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as well. Additionally, dozens of major colleges across eight different states, including the University of Texas at Austin, Auburn University, Boise State University and Florida A&M University, have taken initiative and blocked the use of the app if students are connected to the college wifi (Bestcolleges.com).

These new plans to ban TikTok have not only received both positive and negative feedback but also a variety of questions from critics. People are mainly concerned with the fact that there is evidence of

Edited by Jasmin Vail

other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Youtube, also tracking and potentially sharing user data as well; however, the United States government has seemingly failed to find an issue with that (Allthingssecured.com; CNBC.com). Skeptics wonder if this is because TikTok is owned by foreign company. In fact, there is a current bill in the works called the Restrict Act, which “[authorizes] the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes” (Congress. gov). While some may say that this suggests the government may not be targeting TikTok specifically, and that TikTok just falls into the category of being owned by a foreign adversary, this is not accurate. Congress.gov defines a foreign adversary as “any foreign government or regime” and TikTok is owned by a private company. As of press time, it is undetermined whether the bill will pass and lead to the banning of TikTok for all citizens.