TikTok ban: Will TikTok be banned in the USA?

The fate of TikTok, an app that allows users to make short animated videos, appears to be in limbo after a U.S. Federal Communications Commission Commissioner called on the app to be removed from Google Play and Apple app stores this week.

In his letter, Carr writes that the BuzzFeed article on TikTok's data access is only one piece of evidence in an overwhelming body that shows the platform presents a serious national security threat. BuzzFeed reported that it reviewed “leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings”, which showed that “China-based employees of ByteDance have repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users”.

Citing BuzzFeed’s exposé, Carr writes in his letter that the article “only adds to an overwhelming body of evidence that TikTok presents a serious national security threat”.

TikTok said it’s currently undertaking a major initiative, dubbed Project Texas, intended to “fully safeguard user data and U.S. national security interests.” The company said it’s now storing all U.S. data by default in Oracle’s cloud, reiterating comments made in a recent blog post: "100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.”

HOW DID TIK TOK BAN AFFECT INDIA?

Initially, due to the ban, many people who used tik tok as their primary source of income lost their livelihood but eventually, as a recent global trend, the measure has come with commercial benefits for local companies. Dozens of homegrown Indian startups building short video, gaming, messaging, and productivity apps have been booming since the ban took effect.

WILL TIK TOK GET BANNED IN THE USA?

“Any new attempt to ban these apps in the U.S. is likely to fail, so the administration and the Commerce Department are attempting to find an approach short of banning but which provides some new assurances around how the parent company running these apps handles U.S. citizen data,” says Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China and technology policy at strategic advisory firm Albright Stonebridge