Are we getting our information stolen?
For decades, the United States has made itself the “champion of an open internet”, which means that the web is unregulated and unlimited to everyone in the U.S. For a long time, the government has argued against internet censorship and funded software that lets people in autocratic states get online.
Recently, The House stated that the government would try again to force the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner.
This is very similar to the stand alone measure of ByteDance, which is the owner of TikTok, and that passed the House last month with bipartisan support — which means two political parties agree on one thing — and this was considered the most significant step yet by Congress to force the sale of an app the size of TikTok.
If ByteDance does not sell the TikTok app within a year, it will be permanently banned.
The U.S. government has figured out that the Chinese government, who owns TikTok, has been taking our information from our devices and our data.
For years, they have had attempts to ban TikTok, but it has never gone all the way through. The TikTok ban bill has passed the Senate, and has been signed by President Joe Biden. The bill says that if TikTok does not get sold to another company within a year, they will ban it permanently.
Some people are asking, “If TikTok gets banned, will it just disappear from my phone?”
TikTok is used by more than 170 million Americans, and will not disappear from your phone if you already have it downloaded.
However, if it gets banned, it will not be available in any app stores, and will not be able to send updates to the app, or fix any bugs in the system which will eventually make it become unstable.
People have many concerns about TikTok since the government found out who owns it and what they are doing.
Lawmakers from both parties have spread awareness about concerns of how Chinese authorities could get data from everyone who uses TikTok.
I don’t think people need to be worried about getting their data stolen only from TikTok because there are many other ways to get your data or information from your phone. If you already have TikTok downloaded, or any other app like that, then the owner can get your data anyway.
TikTok will most likely not be banned, considering that another company can buy it and get money from that, and it would not be very beneficial considering the Chinese government can get our data very easily in other ways.