Reports that the Biden administration is threatening to ban TikTok, the country’s most downloaded and one of the most used apps, sparked suspicion and outrage from users on Thursday.

Some called it a violation of the 1st Amendment. Others claimed it was a ploy to help Instagram Reels, Facebook owner Meta’s short video service. Some questioned why TikTok was singled out as a threat, given how many apps stored their users’ personal information.

And some simply appealed to policymakers for compassion. “Please don’t ban TikTok. My teenage son and I are having a blast there,” says a Twitter user named Aimee Vance tweetedand added: “Together…”

Here’s a brief overview of what’s happening and why, along with some of the pros and cons of the government’s position.

What does the board want?

President Biden is trying to do the same as President Trump: taking TikTok off the hands of a Chinese company subject to Chinese law. The app is made by ByteDance, an internet-focused company founded in China in 2012. While ByteDance has attracted some global investors, it is still controlled by its Chinese founders.

The Trump administration even went so far as to ban TikTok in the United States in 2020. However, that order was blocked by two federal courts, which ruled that the government

had

exceeded his authority.

The US demands that the Chinese owners of TikTok sell shares or be suspended

More recently, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a group of federal agencies that investigates the national security issues raised by such investments, gave ByteDance an ultimatum, according to the Wall Street Journal and several other outlets: sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States. A TikTok spokesperson has said a sale would not allay national security concerns because it would not place new restrictions on access to the app’s data.

TikTok’s CEO will testify at a congressional hearing next week. The company has proposed storing US users’ data in this country, with technical and business protections designed to prevent access by the Chinese government. But US officials are apparently not convinced that this approach would be effective

reply address

their concerns.

Congress, meanwhile, is considering a nationwide ban on apps controlled by the Chinese government. And the federal government, like many state and local governments around the world, has banned TikTok on devices provided to its employees. Orange County joined their ranks on Tuesday.

Can the government really ban TikTok?

Telecom industry experts say it’s technically possible, but there are problems.

The main players here are the two companies that make the dominant mobile phone operating systems and app stores, Apple and Google. They could help the government enforce compliance by removing TikTok from their app stores, forcing anyone who wants to install or update the software on their phones to “sideload” it from another source.

That’s not difficult on an Android phone, but it’s more difficult on an Apple iPhone, at least for the time being. Under pressure from US and European governments, Apple will reportedly allow sideloading in the new OS expected to be released this year.

However, Apple and Google could go further by using their control over the software on their devices to make their phones incompatible with TikTok. At the very least, they could force current TikTok users to stick with the current version of the software, whose performance is likely to degrade over time.

However, there is a trade-off with this approach, said Emma Llans, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Without regular privacy and security updates, the app “would become a great target for people looking to exploit outdated software,” she said, adding, “It creates a different kind of vulnerability that would affect millions of people, many of them young people.”

If the government were to formally ban TikTok, network operators could potentially block traffic between the company’s servers and US users. But the app’s huge user base can scramble to find ways to get around any barriers, such as using virtual private networks to connect to TikTok through other countries, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project in New America. “Smart Chinese can do it like this [it] should be so much easier here,” Calabrese said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned into a thing.”

Biden Administration Backs New Bill That Could Ban TikTokWhy Is TikTok A Target?

The Biden administration and members of Congress from both parties have been expressing concerns about TikTok for months. While some legislators have complained about the network’s content and its effect on young people, the main issue is the network’s owners.

Sara Collins, senior policy officer

counselor

for the advocacy group Public Knowledge, said the potential for exploitation by China’s authoritarian government makes the app’s privacy threats unique. If TikTok were magically owned by a US

a

company

assume this quote is sic? “US company” is a bit of a weird expression. It’s what my fingers typed, but in hindsight it’s probably not the way she said it.

then we would be talking about it like Google or Facebook in the same breath,” she said.

TikTok collects a lot of data about its users, including their location and contacts, Collins said. Other companies do too, largely because federal law does not protect that information. Collins even said, “There’s a whole industry of data brokers selling this data.”

“It’s hard to pick apart a TikTok issue when the US has a privacy issue,” she said.

Still, there’s a fear that the Chinese Communist Party or Chinese government officials will demand access to the data for purposes far less benign than personalizing your video feed. Under Chinese law, ByteDance must hand over personal information relevant to national security when requested by the government.

It is not clear what sensitive data, if any, the Beijing government has collected from TikTok. Part of the challenge in evaluating the Biden administration’s stance, Llans said, is that the intelligence community has not and probably never will share the information underlying its concerns about TikTok.

However, in December, the public got a glimpse into TikTok’s potential for mischief when the company admitted that some of its employees had used the app to track journalists’ location. TikTok said its employees were tracking news leaks within the company, but to some critics, the episode illustrated what the Chinese government could do through the platform.

Not only could the Chinese government use the data TikTok is already collecting, critics say, it could force the app to collect additional information purely for the government’s purposes. And aside from the surveillance threat, they say, China could manipulate TikTok’s video feeds or the app itself to further its propaganda.

At a congressional hearing last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said TikTok raised a number of national security concerns. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to monitor data collection from millions of users or to monitor the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so choose, or to control software on millions of devices, making it an opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices,” Wray said, according to National Public Radio.

But again, neither China nor TikTok are unique, Llans said. Anyone using social media networks should assume that multiple governments are trying to influence them, she said, not just authoritarian regimes but Western democracies as well.