TikTok is a popular app among young people that allows users to showcase their creativity through various means such as dancing, cooking, and other forms of expression. It has gained a reputation as a platform that encourages and promotes creativity, making it a popular space for self-expression among its users.

Governments in the West have been banning TikTok due to concerns over user data privacy and potential ties to the Chinese government. Lawmakers and regulators fear that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, could share sensitive user data, such as location information, with the Chinese government, as Chinese laws allow the government to demand data from Chinese companies for intelligence-gathering operations. Moreover, there are concerns that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to spread misinformation. Although TikTok has denied these allegations and has attempted to distance itself from ByteDance, Western governments remain cautious about the app’s potential security risks.

There are countries that have already banned TikTok.

In mid-2020, India banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese-owned apps. The government alleged that these apps were secretly transmitting users’ data to servers outside India, which resulted in one of the biggest markets for ByteDance being shut down.

USA has banned the app in some states too.

In the United States, over two dozen states have banned TikTok on government-issued devices and many universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, Auburn University, and Boise State University, have blocked the app from campus Wi-Fi networks. While the app has been banned on U.S. government devices used by the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard for three years, it is still accessible on personal devices and students often switch to cellular data to continue using the app.

The Congress:

A bill has been approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week, which would give the president the authority to ban TikTok entirely, although it has not been passed yet. The previous Trump administration had also tried to ban TikTok, but was blocked by the courts.

Read about the app creation:

TikTok was launched in September 2016 by Chinese tech company ByteDance, under the name Douyin, exclusively for the Chinese market. The app quickly became popular in China, and within a year, it had over 100 million users. In September 2017, ByteDance launched TikTok, a similar app but aimed at international markets outside of China.

TikTok’s popularity continued to grow rapidly, particularly among younger users, and by the end of 2018, it had become the most downloaded app in the US. In November 2019, TikTok reported that it had reached over 1.5 billion downloads worldwide.

However, the app’s rise to global prominence has not been without controversy. Governments and regulators in several countries, including the US, have raised concerns about the app’s data privacy and security practices, given its Chinese ownership. India, which was TikTok’s largest market outside of China, banned the app in June 2020, citing concerns about national security.

In the US, the Trump administration attempted to ban TikTok outright in 2020, citing national security concerns. However, the ban was blocked by the courts, and the Biden administration has taken a more measured approach, but there is still ongoing debate about whether TikTok represents a security risk.