Recently, the lawyers of the United States, Europe, and Canada raised their voices to ban access to the mobile application named “TikTok”, the most popular mobile app development project produced by “ByteDance”, a Chinese mobile app design and internet technology company. They stated they are getting security threats.
All federal agencies were told by the White House on 27th Feb to delete this application from the governmental devices and different cities, including New York, on the ultimatum of 30 days.
Not only that, a house committee backed even more forceful steps on 1st March in order to vote for advance legislation to enable President Joe Biden to ban TikTok mobile application from all locally used devices.
On 23rd March, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Chew, was grilled about the application’s connection to its parent firm and China’s potential influence over the platform in roughly five hours of testimony before a House committee.
Here are the reasons why the pressure has increased upon the mobile application TikTok.
Why is TikTok being banned by governments?
China is the final word in this.
Western lawmakers and regulators are becoming more concerned that TikTok and its parent firm, ByteDance, would provide the Chinese government access to private user data, such as location data. They have cited legal provisions that permit the Chinese government to surreptitiously get information for intelligence-gathering purposes from Chinese persons and businesses. They are also concerned that China might spread false information via TikTok’s content recommendations. For a long time, TikTok has refuted these accusations and made an effort to separate itself from ByteDance.
Has TikTok been banned in any nation?
Midway through 2020, India banned the platform, costing ByteDance one of its largest markets. The government also took action against 59 Chinese-owned apps, alleging that they were surreptitiously sending user data to servers located outside of India.
The app has been prohibited from being used on official devices by a number of other nations and government organizations, including the Parliament of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, the executive branch of the European Union, and Britain.
What is the current state of bans in the US?
TikTok has been prohibited from being used on government-issued smartphones in more than twenty states since November. Additionally, some institutions have barred the mobile app from their campus Wi-Fi networks, including the University of Texas at Austin, Auburn University, and Boise State University. However, to utilize the program, students frequently just switch to cellular data.
The first such ban in the history of the country was signed into law by Montana Governor Greg Gianforte in May, outlawing TikTok’s operations within the state. Days afterward, TikTok filed a lawsuit, claiming that the First Amendment was infringed by the Act. The prohibition will go into force in January.
According to a City Hall official, after determining that TikTok “posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks,” Cyber Command blocked the app on city-owned devices in August.
The app has already been prohibited from being used on military-issue U.S. government smartphones for three years. Yet, personal electronics are usually exempt from the prohibitions.
Is Congress attempting to outlaw TikTok?
A few participants might wish to. A bill that would give the president the power to outlaw the platform was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March. (Courtesy earlier blocked an attempt to do this by the Trump administration.)
Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, pushed for a bill that outlawed TikTok on government-issued smartphones, and it passed in December as part of a spending package. In January, he filed a bill that would outlaw the mobile application in USA. A different bipartisan bill that was submitted in December aimed to outlaw TikTok as well as any other comparable social media platforms that originated in nations like Iran and Russia.
The Biden administration: what are they up to?
According to recent statements from TikTok, the Biden administration wants the Chinese proprietors of the app to sell it or risk having it banned. In response to inquiries concerning TikTok, the White House recently mentioned an ongoing review, but other than that, the administration has been mostly silent. Concerning ByteDance’s and TikTok connection with the Chinese government and user data handling, the two companies have been in private discussions for years with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, the administration’s review panel.
