A Bill In The Works to Ban Tik Tok in the U.S.

Senator Marco Rubio and a pair of bipartisan Congressmen are trying to push through a bill that would limit Tik Tok from operating in the United States. The concern is over whether Tik Tok and its parent company, ByteDance (out of Beijing), can protect the information of citizens from the Chinese Government, which has already been called into question several times over the past two years.

Or simply put, Rubio and company don’t want the Chinese to have so much control over our social media and privacy. 

Over the past several weeks, seven states have created laws around Tik Tok and user privacy including South Dakota, Maryland and Utah. This gives the impression that there is a wider concern than previously had for the company’s reach and influence.

This piece of legislation also echoes to what was proposed last year in the, “No Tik Tok on Government Devices Act”  which would have banned the use of Tik Tok by Government Agencies. 

TikTok has previously said it doesn’t share information with the Chinese government. According to them, a US-security team decides who can access US user data from China. Yet, TikTok has also said that employees based in China can access user data, leading us to question what confidence we can have in their use of our information.

Questions over user privacy are nothing new, consider the hearings that took place last year with the heads of Facebook and Twitter, to Donald Trump creating his own social network (Truth Social) over concerns of freedom of speech. People are more cautious than ever when it comes to social media.

The bottom line is, people of all ages are allowing themselves to give information about themselves to people who can use it however they please. The more aware we are, the less influence we can give to these companies.

Be careful what you say yes to when using the internet.