Picture Source : Politico
The TikTok Controversy Explained
What is Tik Tok?
Tik Tok is a short form video social media app owned by Bytedance – A Chinese company. It has gained massive popularity in the past few years, especially towards teenagers and young adults.
What Makes Tik Tok different from other social media?
The secret behind Tik Tok’s success is its algorithm. Its algorithm records how long you watch each video, when you scroll, and what type of video you like to determine what other short video should appear in your feed. The result of this algorithm is a social media app that is heavily addicting and popular worldwide.
What is currently happening to Tik Tok in the United States?
On April 14th 2023, Montana became the first state to ban Tik Tok completely, and other states may follow suit. Proponents in Montana are concerned about not leaking citizen data to China, while opponents care more about preserving their platform for free speech.
Over a dozen states have banned it on government devices and on university networks. Many other countries have banned the app on government devices. These include Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, Denmark, The European Union, France, India, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan, The United Kingdom and the United states.
Where does the ban stem from?
The ban stems from security concerns from China and Tik Tok’s parent company – Byte dance. Governments are worried that Byte dance may leak user’s private information to the Chinese government. This first surfaced with the Trump administration. In September of 2020, the Trump administration deemed Tik Tok a threat to national security, and wanted Bytedance to figure out a solution. The Biden administration has continued to fight against Tik Tok. Bytedance was faced with two options, to either sell Tik Tok to an American company or face a nationwide ban.
Tik Tok in the US is run and operated by an American company. This means that all the data from Tik Tok in the US is stored in the US. China does not have access to Americans’ personal data from Tik Tok. Tik Tok does not exist in China, and instead there is Douyin, which is much more heavily regulated. Douyin is operated as an entirely separate app in the Chinese market.
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