Theo DiBiasi
On March 23rd, 2023, a five-hour hearing took place featuring TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. Claiming that TikTok – which is worth approximately $50 billion – is a national security risk, the United States government interrogated Chew on the safety of American users’ online data. Despite all the questions asked and statements made, there is one question that should be addressed more than anything else discussed in the hearing: Is this the best use of the government’s time and effort?
The TikTok Security Crisis:
Recently, the Biden administration demanded that all of TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their stakes in the company or else they risk a U.S.-wide ban of the app, but why? For decades now, we as consumers have allowed tech companies – both large and small – to gather massive amounts of data from us. This data proves useful to both the companies and the government, for surveillance and law enforcement purposes. Tiktok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has over one billion users including roughly 150 million American users. China’s government has sweeping control over Chinese tech companies and the data they collect from users, which creates concerns for the U.S. government.
The U.S. government has primarily two main concerns. For starters, the threat of espionage will always be a concern, and with TikTok, the government is uneasy about American user data privacy being violated. Bytedance engineers have accessed American users’ private data, and have also admitted that two employees based in China managed to acquire American journalist IP addresses and spy on them. Since then the employees have been fired, and TikTok has reinforced its claims that no data has been given to the Chinese government. Furthermore, some officials are concerned that TikTok’s algorithm can influence Americans by censoring and altering videos.
Due to these concerns, the current administration demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their shares in the company. TikTok has said that 60% of ByteDance shares are owned by global investors, 20% by employees, and 20% by the founders.
Is The Government Wasting Time?
Although our government seems extremely adamant about purchasing TikTok shares or banning the app, Mr. Chew brought up valid points himself at the hearing. Despite TikTok being under fire, social companies that are American-based have bad records regarding privacy. For example, Facebook broke data protection laws in 2018 with Cambridge Analytica harvesting data from around 87 million users but still remain one of the most popular social apps to date.
Looking at Apple’s App Store, four of the top five apps in March were Chinese owned; however, due to TikTok growing at exceptional rates, it naturally becomes the punching bag. If TikTok did get banned, problems brought up in the five hour hearing would be solved from the government’s perspective. On the other hand, millions of people across the country with the app installed will still have access, and for those that do not will still have access to many apps that have similar problems, Chinese owned or not.
Despite these issues, TikTok has already planned to spend $1.5 billion to protect U.S. data. With TikTok’s plan titled “Project Texas”, U.S. data will be routed to and stored by Oracle, an American computer technology company headquartered in Texas. Furthermore, data will be managed by TikTok U.S. Data Security, which would be managed by only U.S. employees and is independent of ByteDance. Mr. Chew stated in the hearing that this plan is expected to be fully completed within 2023 and by October all new data will be stored on American soil.
Amid all the concerns, there are many factors that make the government’s pressure look somewhat pointless. There are apps available that have had and currently have similar issues that remained unbanned, not to mention TikTok’s $1.5 billion dollar plan to protect American user data being completely overlooked. Also, the ban would only remove the app from stores, meaning users that already own it can still keep it until updates stop allowing them to.
Should TikTok Be Banned?
After some research and consideration, the TikTok ban does not make the most sense to myself and what seems like many Americans. There are similar risks on many apps people use daily, and TikTok seems to have developed a plan to protect our data and collaborate with America in order to make a smooth transition.
Over and above that, there are other conflicts regarding Chinese espionage and even more conflicts we have within our own country: It appears that TikTok is simply a minnow in the ocean of issues we have to overcome.
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