Would Josh Hawley's Bill to ban TikTok nationwide be a net positive for the United States?
Chinese short-form video app, TikTok has been at the center of the legislative debate stage for some time now, with Republican Senator Josh Hawley leading the charge against it. Hawley believes that TikTok poses a security threat to the United States, and gives China a competitive advantage in the data war currently being waged between the two world superpowers. Let’s break this down.
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, was the most downloaded app on the iOS App Store and Android Play Store in both 2021 and 2022 with over 210 million total downloads in the US alone. In 2020, TikTok had over 100 million daily users in the US and in 2022, quarter over quarter, TikTok’s user base grew at a staggering rate of over 233%. These are groundbreaking numbers in the mobile app space, beating out tech giants Snapchat, Twitter, and Pinterest by hundreds of millions of downloads.
Upon first open, the app seems relatively harmless. The user is greeted with a full-screen video, typically something innocuous and entertaining and they can one-finger scroll endlessly to their heart’s content. So why are Josh Hawley and so many other lawmakers vehemently opposed to TikTok’s distribution in the United States?
Simply put, TikTok is essentially a data-gathering machine sending personal information about hundreds of millions of Americans directly to the Chinese Communist Party. Although that may seem like a bold claim, after thoroughly reviewing TikTok’s Privacy Policy you may find yourself in agreement. Let’s take a look at just a few of TikTok’s permissions.
As long as the app is installed, TikTok runs continuously in the background on your phone, laptop, or any other device you have downloaded it on. It collects your keystroke patterns and rhythms, has access to and collects data from your email, calendar, files (including app and file names and types), notes, and clipboard storage (including images) on your device and all devices with the same login information.
“…it knows exactly where you are at all times…”
TikTok also geolocates your device, so it knows exactly where you are at all times, assuming you have your device on you. It knows and stores the model of your device, your device system, your network type, your audio settings and connected audio device settings. It also stores your purchase information, including payment card numbers or other third-party payment information such as billing and shipping addresses. And this only scratches the surface. If this sounds like an impossible invasion of privacy, this is all written within the first 10 paragraphs in TikTok’s Privacy Policy.
To make matters worse, TikTok has a direct connection to the CCP. According to Chinese law, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, must comply with requests from the Chinese Communist Party and provide them with all collected data. This is quite possibly petabytes worth of highly personal information about American citizens, which raises concerns about how this data could be used against our interests.
Given China's adversarial relationship with the United States and TikTok's role as a data aggregator for the CCP, it is understandable why some would support Senator Hawley's efforts to ban the platform nationwide. However, it is important to consider whether this is the most appropriate course of action. Some argue that it should be left to individual discretion to use TikTok and not within the purview of a politician to make that decision. Regardless of the outcome, it will be interesting to watch this situation unfold, and if lawmakers do end up banning the app, the subsequent reactions from the public will be entertaining to say the least.