TikTok has been banned on all US federal agency devices
Similar to what happened with Huawei devices, President Joe Biden signed a bill barring the use of the popular TikTok app on all federal government devices in the United States.
Concerns that the Chinese government could obtain data from American users led to this restriction, which is a big blow to the world’s fastest-growing social media platform.
In the following two months, various government agencies are required by law to issue rules to execute this restriction. However, government employees who use TikTok for official business can have it installed on their work phones.
This Monday, the House of Representatives enacted a law to prevent its members from using the app TikTok on their personal devices. With regards to the latter, the Chinese firm said, “It is a political gesture that will do nothing to promote national security interests.”
Senator Marco Rubio has campaigned for a measure that would restrict all usage of the TikTok video platform in the United States on the grounds that it is “controlled by the Beijing government.”
Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting U.S. corporations from doing business with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, shortly before leaving office.
The authorization was cancelled by Biden in June 2021, and since then, the platform’s security has been under review. ByteDance states that its data centres in Virginia store and back up all user information from the United States, with additional copies being maintained in Singapore.
TikTok’s popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, with the company estimating an increase of 45 percent in monthly active users between July 2020 and July 2022. This coincides with the onslaught of legislative scrutiny the app is receiving. As of 2022, it had quietly surpassed Instagram and Twitter as the most downloaded app in the globe.
Over half of all American adults between the ages of 18 and 30 use the platform, and nearly two-thirds of those between the ages of 13 and 18 log in at least once every day, as shown in a survey by the Pew Research Center.