One of the world’s biggest social media apps is at risk of being banned across all devices in the U.S.
On March 13, a bill was passed in Congress with the goal to either force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to an American-owned company or shut down. If the bill was passed into a law, ByteDance would have six months to sell the app or have it taken off of all app stores in the U.S., banning it for all U.S. citizens.
The main reason the government claims to be doing this is because TikTok has been proven to collect the data of its users. That being said, all big social media platforms are guilty of this. However, the problem arises that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, raising some red flags for people who do not want their information going out to foreign places. Many people do not trust the fact that China could have their data stored potentially to sell to other people. But, any big social media company could be doing this, regardless of where they are located.
This decision from the government has understandably been met with a lot of backlash. People do not see this as a great threat like the government seems to. After all, there is more information about us all on the internet than we realize. Everything we do online can be traced back to us, allowing anyone who knows to access our information to find out things we might not want them to.
TikTok has been around for more than six years and has never been a part of any scandals or given any reason not to be trusted by the government, yet they are adamant about passing this law. In 2022, TikTok was the most downloaded mobile app across the world. With such a big following and user base, it is likely that the government just does not want to see a foreign company with this much power, especially over the American people. Even though the government claims to be doing this for our safety, they should not have this control over what we can see as citizens. The government taking away the app with no clear evidence of TikTok being a threat to our safety should not be allowed.
Luckily for us, it does not look like the law will be passed anytime soon. It still needs to go through many different levels of the government to get approved, and even then, it is bound to be fought by ByteDance, delaying the ban even more. Regardless of what the government decides, we are likely to see TikTok stick around for a while longer.
