US bans TikTok in govt-owned devices, here’s why

Nagpur: South Dakota banned TikTok from government-owned devices on Tuesday (November 30), citing threats to user data. “The Chinese Communist Party manipulates the American people using information gathered on TikTok, and they gather data from the devices that access the platform,” Noem said in a statement. ByteDance, a Chinese company that relocated its headquarters to Singapore in 2020, owns TikTok.

Why has the US raised concerns about TikTok?

The US government has been monitoring TikTok since it began gaining popularity, particularly among younger users, in a landscape dominated by US-owned social media behemoths such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Since 2019, when the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (Cfius) began reviewing a merger between the app’s parent company, ByteDance Ltd., and Musical.ly, the app has been under scrutiny by US officials.

Because of TikTok’s Chinese origins and the fear that Chinese companies would eventually be controlled by the Chinese government, US President Donald Trump was an early critic of the app. He claimed TikTok was providing information about US users to the Chinese government.

Could the US eventually ban TikTok?

In June of this year, Brendan Carr of the US Federal Communications Commission wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, requesting that the app be removed from the App Store and Google Play, respectively. “TikTok is not what it appears to be at first glance.” It’s more than just a platform for sharing amusing videos or memes. “At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool,” he explained, adding that “India, the world’s largest economy, has already banned TikTok on national security grounds for stealing and secretly transmitting user data in an unauthorized manner.”

They added they will introduce legislation to “ban TikTok and other social media companies that are effectively controlled by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) from operating in the United States.” Multiple investigations by US media organizations on TikTok’s possible misuse of user data have also added to concerns.