China claims that the US has inflated national security concerns over TikTok in an effort to stifle the Chinese startup. Because of concerns about cybersecurity, US federal agencies have been instructed to remove the Chinese app from all staff devices within 30 days. Canada and the EU have taken similar measures, and some politicians have called for nationwide bans.
Think about the TikTok management.
They nearly avoided having their popular app banned in the US by the administration of then-President Donald Trump in 2020 and had to deal with a barrage of inquiries on a daily basis on the cybersecurity dangers TikTok posed.
The topic was largely put to bed in 2021 when President Joe Biden overturned Trump's proposal due to various complicated legal challenges.
Both TikTok and the millions of influencers who rely on the social media app to make a career could almost be heard breathing a sigh of relief.
But now, in an ironic nod to the video app's recognizable looping style, we've come full circle.
But, the stakes have since increased.
Nearly three years prior to Trump's planned ban, TikTok had been downloaded 800 million times worldwide. As of right now, 3.5 billion people have downloaded it, according to app analytics company Sensor Tower.
The geopolitical tensions between China and Western nations are also rising, making the future of TikTok more uncertain than ever.
Moreover, the three persistent cybersecurity worries regarding TikTok include;
Data collection on TikTok is 'excessive.'
TikTok is routinely accused by detractors of collecting enormous amounts of user data. It is frequently used as support for a cybersecurity study written in July 2022 by researchers from the Australian cyber firm Internet 2.0.
Researchers examined the app's source code and found evidence of "excessive data collecting" there. According to analysts, TikTok gathers information about users, including their location, the device they are using, and the other apps that are installed on it.
However, a comparable test conducted by Citizen Lab came to the conclusion that "TikTok collects similar types of data to follow user behavior as other major social media sites do."
The Georgia University of Technology reported the same thing in January in a recent research, saying: "The essential point here is that most other social networking and mobile apps do the same things."
Secondly, the Chinese government might use TikTok to snoop on users.
The majority of us agree that sharing vast amounts of private data with social networks is the contract we make with them, which irritates privacy experts.
In return for providing us with their services for free, they compile information about us and use it to market to us on their platform or sell our data to other businesses that want to market to us elsewhere on the internet.
The issue that critics have with TikTok is that it's owned by Beijing-based tech giant
ByteDance is distinctive as a mainstream non-American app. For instance, US-based corporations Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube all gather comparable amounts of data.
For years, US politicians and the majority of the rest of the world have placed a certain amount of trust in these platforms' ability to collect data without jeopardizing national security.
In his executive order for 2020, Donald Trump claimed that China might be able to "monitor the movements of federal employees and contractors, construct dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and undertake corporate espionage" because to TikTok's data collecting.
Evidence to date suggests that this is mainly a theoretical issue, but concerns are heightened by a vague regulation passed by China in 2017.
All Chinese organizations and individuals are required to "help, aid, and cooperate" with Chinese intelligence efforts, according to Article 7 of China's National Intelligence Law.
Those who distrust all Chinese businesses, not just TikTok, frequently use this statement as evidence.
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology counter that this statement has been misinterpreted and point out that the law also has exceptions that safeguard the rights of users and private businesses.
Since 2020, TikTok management have constantly urged consumers to take comfort in the fact that Chinese employees cannot access the data of users who are not Chinese.
However, ByteDance acknowledged in December that some of its staff members based in Beijing did access the data of at least two US journalists and a "small number" of additional individuals in order to track their whereabouts and determine whether they were meeting TikTok staff members suspected of leaking information to the media.
The employees who had access to the data, according to a spokesman for TikTok, were fired in December.
The company maintains that customer data is never retained in China and is instead kept in the US and Singapore. It claims to be in the midst of establishing data warehouses in additional locations, such as Ireland, where it intends to process all EU and UK data by 2024.
Lastly, TikTok might be employed as a "brain-washing" device.
"The Chinese government might... manipulate the recommendation algorithm, which could be utilized for influence operations," FBI Director Christopher Wray warned US legislators in November 2022.
Douyin, a sibling app to TikTok that is exclusively available in China, is strictly controlled and purportedly designed to encourage the viral spread of positive and wholesome content, which adds fuel to those worries.
China extensively censors all social media, with an army of internet police removing anything that criticize the leadership or incite unrest.
There were high-profile instances of censorship on TikTok in the beginning of its ascent: a user in the US had her account suspended for discussing Beijing's treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang;
TikTok however issued an apology and restored the account following a ferocious outcry from the public.
Since then, there haven't been many instances of censorship, aside from the contentious moderation choices that all platforms must make.
Between TikTok and Douyin, Citizen Lab researchers conducted their comparison. They came to the conclusion that TikTok doesn't use the same level of political censoring.
Researchers claimed that "the platform does not enforce clear post suppression."
Analysts from the Georgia University of Technology also looked for jokes about Chinese Premier Xi Jinping and issues like Taiwan's independence. They came to the following conclusion: "On TikTok, videos in each of these categories are simple to find. Many are well-liked and extensively circulated."