There is growing bipartisan support to ban TikTok in the United States. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI), and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) proposed legislation to ban the app. Despite security concerns, ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, insists they store US user data outside China. Regardless, lawmakers in the US fear the CCP could force the company to hand over US user info. So with that said, will the US ban TikTok?
Will bipartisan support result in a US TikTok ban?
In December, TikTok publicly admitted employees “improperly accessed” the personal user data of two journalists and terminated said employees. The announcement came a few days after Senator Rubio introduced the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP ACT. The TSA and the United States military also banned the app on all government-issued devices for national security concerns.
However, the bipartisan bill is subject to backlash, with critics saying it’s more about politics than privacy concerts. According to NPR, University of Washington law and information science professor, Ryan Calo said TikTok isn’t such a security risk. “[I]f the sophisticated Chinese intelligence sector wanted […] information […], it wouldn’t probably have to go through TikTok,” he said.
Does TikTok actually spy on you?
As mentioned, the company publicly admitted to four employees accessing the private data of two reporters. Additionally, Forbes reports the application injects a javascript that tracks every button you press when using the in-app browser. However, it seems this is common practice for social media platforms, as Facebook and Instagram do the same thing. The European Union’s General Data Protection Commission fined Facebook’s parent company, Meta, $410 million for improper use of user data. And elsewhere on the internet, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is investigating a massive Twitter data breach.
Lawmakers only introduced the bill in mid-December. If it does pass, it won’t be for some time. And if the government does ban the app, it will have a reckoning in backlash from the younger generations.
