Trump administration speculates banning TikTok over data breaching
President Donald Trump gave TikTok the option to completely ban the app or sell it to an American buyer. A proposed joint deal emerged that would give Walmart and Oracle a combined 20% stake, but that deal remains up in the air. Unsplash.
TikTok users around the globe have put their creative expressions on display since 2016, through short video uploads on the application. From dancing content to homemade cooking recipes, people share passions and create their own small communities in the process.
However, those communities may be disbanded, as a November 2019 investigation launched by the U.S. government regarding TikTok’s alleged national security risks could result in the ban of the app in the country.
On July 31, Trump first announced plans to ban TikTok through executive action. As of last weekend, Trump approved a deal that would give Walmart and Oracle a total of a 20% stake in a new branding of TikTok called TikTok Global. However, Trump decreed if Walmart and Oracle didn’t have total control, the deal would fall through.
TikTok, created by the Chinese company ByteDance, was accused by some users and the U.S. government of censoring politically sensitive content. The issue of censorship arose when a user named Feroza Aziz was locked out of her account after posting a viral video of her criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of the country’s Muslim Uighur population.
Check Point Research, a cybersecurity firm, also found hacking issues in the app that allowed hackers to delete and upload videos and release personal user information such as private emails. Despite the hacking and censoring accusations, some TikTok users and political experts seem unfazed over the company’s ability to collect user data.
“Facebook and Twitter are U.S. corporations, so it's nice that other countries are involved with information technology,” Arthur Blaser, Chapman political science professor and expert in international human rights, wrote in an email to The Panther. “I soon became concerned that in both the U.S. and China, governments and economic enterprises are much more involved than most of the people.”
Senior health sciences major Sarah Shattuck has accrued over 5,800 followers on TikTok, growing a platform. However, she also didn’t express any personal concerns over the collection of user data and hacking issues.
“It doesn’t bother me because I know iPhones already collect data,” Shattuck said. “I don’t have anything to hide from the government anyways.”
Blaser told The Panther that he is worried this issue will become a contest between Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for who can criticize China more, and that people will become cynical that Trump is more interested in issues around TikTok than human rights. Shattuck echoed Blaser’s political concerns.
“I don’t think he is concerned about anything other than getting reelected right now,” Shattuck said of Trump. “From what I’ve seen, the app has a large liberal and Democratic audience, so he is scared of losing the election because he can’t put political advertisements on it.”
Although an official resolution to this deal remains unknown, Shattuck expressed how disheartening a ban would be for fellow users.
“A ban would destroy communities that people have created within the app,” she said.