The US has threatened to ban TikTok amid national security concerns. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company named ByteDance. A spokesperson for TikTok has said that the White House has asked ByteDance to sell TikTok to a Non-Chinese company or else face a ban in the United States of America.
This new move by the Biden Administration comes after a new US legislation that states that the government has the authority to ban any foreign technologies if they pose a national security threat. The ban of TikTok in the United States has been in talks for the past few years but the possibility of a ban never materialized due to concerns of violating the first amendment by banning the app in the country.
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TikTok ban in the US has been a highly discussed topic since the presidency of Donald Trump
The ban was first talked about during the presidency of Donald Trump in 2020. The then-president threatened to ban the company if it was not sold to an American company.
TikTok’s servers are based in China since it is owned by a Chinese company. Concerns arose that the app, which has an extensive user data policy, could access the data of American users and store that data on Chinese servers.
Amid security concerns, Trump under his presidency declared TikTok a national threat and a harmful platform and asked that the ownership of the company be transferred to an American company.
Under a project called ‘Project Texas’, TikTok proposed an agreement to the United States parliament stating that the American users’ data could be stored on American servers run by Oracle computers.
The Biden Administration has not yet made any response to ‘Project Texas’. TikTok is disappointed at the American government’s latest move. A company spokesperson has said that transferring ownership of the company will not resolve any security concerns.
The spokesperson further added that the transfer of ownership will not impose any new restrictions on how people use and access TikTok data.
Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, is expected to testify next week before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The company will reportedly be questioned about its ties to China and the harmful content that it delivers to young people.
The popular app has been seeing ban across major countries around the world
The United States has already banned the installation of TikTok on the official phones of government officials. Many US states have also given orders against the installation of the app on government devices.
Countries around the world are waking up to the threat, both security and physiological, posed by the platform. Many countries have already banned the use and installation of the app.
India banned TikTok across the whole country in 2020 claiming that the app was a threat to the “security and integrity” of the country.
Similar to the United States, Canada has also banned the app from being installed on government officials’ devices stating the app as a security threat.
The European Commission, which is a part of the executive of the European Union (EU), has also given orders against the presence of TikTok on the devices owned by government members.
