The United States and other Western governments are taking steps to block access to the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, citing espionage fears and concerns about the company collecting and sharing personal data. The White House has given U.S. federal agencies 30 days to delete TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices. Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and more than half of U.S. states have already banned TikTok use.
The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, could share user data with China’s authoritarian government. There is also concern about content and whether it harms teenagers’ mental health.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump and his administration sought to force ByteDance to sell off its U.S. assets and ban TikTok from app stores. Congress passed the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in December as part of a sweeping government funding package. House Republicans are expected to move forward Tuesday with a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok nationwide.
TikTok said in a blog post in June that it will route all data from U.S. users to servers controlled by Oracle, the Silicon Valley company it chose as its U.S. tech partner in 2020. But the amount of information TikTok collects might not be that different from other popular social media sites, experts say.
If policy makers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for a basic privacy law that bans all companies from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in xenophobic showboating that does nothing to protect anyone, according to Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future.
Overall, the potential abuse of privacy by the Chinese government is concerning, and it’s important to note how much data TikTok and other social media platforms collect. While the White House and other governments are taking steps to ban TikTok, it remains unclear how much of an impact this will have.
Key Points:
• The United States and other Western governments are taking steps to block the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, citing espionage fears and concerns about the company collecting and sharing personal data.
• The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, could share user data with China’s authoritarian government.
• Then-President Donald Trump and his administration sought to force ByteDance to sell off its U.S. assets and ban TikTok from app stores.
• Congress passed the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in December as part of a sweeping government funding package.
• House Republicans are expected to move forward Tuesday with a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok nationwide.
• The amount of information TikTok collects might not be that different from other popular social media sites, experts say.
• If policy makers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for a basic privacy law that bans all companies from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place.