Love it or hate it, nobody can deny the overall effect that TikTok has on everyone’s daily lives and culture. It’s not so weird seeing random people dance and record themselves in the middle of the street anymore. TikTok has also changed the way we consume content, popularizing their shortened videos format and leading to the creation of YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. It also seems to be popular among Vanderbilt students, with a VPR poll finding that approximately half of surveyed students use the app. Despite all this influence and popularity, it seems that TikTok cannot escape being at the center of another controversy every other month.
The main controversy surrounding TikTok has always been data privacy. But how is TikTok different from other social media platforms who also face questions about user data privacy? For one thing, TikTok is not owned by an American company. In fact, its parent company, ByteDance, is a Chinese-owned company with some executives who have a record of obedience to the Chinese government although there is no definitive evidence of ByteDance giving up user data to the government. China has laws that allow the ruling party to secretly request data from companies for intelligence and security purposes, which is a serious concern to many Western countries. Many countries have already taken steps against TikTok, such as banning the use of it in military or government devices. One critical moment came when the state of Montana banned the use of the app in May last year. It also did not help when a former ByteDance executive claimed that the Chinese government used data held by the company to identify and locate protestors in Hong Kong.
Another controversy surrounding the company is the platform’s role in spreading misinformation and discriminatory content especially in the US. The most recent incident happened with bipartisan criticism of content on the platform, calling it antisemitic especially after Israel’s war with Hamas. The Biden administration is under pressure to take action given all of the controversies surrounding TikTok. But what can the administration actually do? Why is it so hard to take action against TikTok?
Well, the first full scale ban of TikTok has not gone smoothly at all. In Montana, some influencers and the company itself already sued the state because of the ban, claiming that it is unconstitutional. The users argue that the ban is against the First Amendment’s right to freedom of speech. One idea to fix TikTok is to force ByteDance to sell the app. Some think Washington can achieve this feat, similar to what they’ve done with Huawei by banning the network equipment made by the Chinese company. However, the TikTok case seems to be much more complicated than that since it includes millions of Americans’ rights to freedom of speech and privacy.
TikTok somehow managed to become an essential part of our lives and the center of many controversies at the same time. The future of the company will thus be tied to important endeavors around the US and worldwide with Beijing’s digital spying efforts, data privacy, misinformation by social media platforms, and hate speech.
Image by Alexander Shatov from Unsplash
