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Until you’ve got been caught below a rock recently, you are in all probability conscious that TikTok is in some sizzling water proper now. The app is presently going through a nationwide ban within the U.S., and CEO Shou Zi Chew was lately grilled by lawmakers about TikTok’s practices and the way it handles shopper app knowledge.
The U.S. fears the Chinese language authorities may gather knowledge from U.S. customers by way of TikTok proprietor ByteDance. Due to this, the app has already been banned on authorities gadgets in each the US and Canada, with the U.Ok. additionally contemplating a ban. Nevertheless, this latest transfer would unfold the ban nationwide, which will not be common among the many app’s viewers of greater than 113 million U.S. customers.
That stated, with all of the drama surrounding TikTok and this aggressive push by lawmakers, do you agree that the app must be banned?
TikTok is aware of it is in a really precarious predicament with the US. That is probably why the app lately refreshed its neighborhood tips with further moderation of AI-generated content material and hate speech. It additionally revealed its neighborhood ideas for the primary time with the intention to give customers a greater understanding of how the app goals to maintain its customers secure.
Nevertheless, lawmakers pressed on with their efforts to ban the app.
Throughout Friday’s testimony, Chew informed lawmakers that Chinese language-based staff at ByteDance have entry to U.S. knowledge (by way of CNBC), not less than for now. TikTok is outwardly within the means of deleting knowledge from servers in Singapore and Virginia that may nonetheless be accessed by ByteDance, an effort dubbed “Challenge Texas” that might see its knowledge being saved within the U.S. by Oracle. He additionally states that the Chinese language authorities has by no means requested for TikTok’s knowledge and that the corporate would refuse such a request.
Nonetheless, that didn’t appear to be sufficient for U.S. lawmakers, who appeared simply as involved as earlier than the listening to.
But, with all of the drama round TikTok and claims that the decision to ban the app is about defending American knowledge, Android Central’s Jerry Hildenbrand writes that it is extra about politics than privateness and that the U.S. has already failed us in relation to defending consumer knowledge.
“The large drawback right here is that there are lots of different apps which can be simply as unhealthy (perhaps even worse) in relation to shopper privateness violations,” he writes. “We all know concerning the few occasions firms took it too far and acquired caught, as Fb (now Meta) and Twitter had been each caught doing issues their very own privateness insurance policies stated would by no means occur. So why ban TikTok and never Twitter?”
He says the reply comes all the way down to Individuals being afraid of China, though the US authorities additionally has workarounds it could actually use to take no matter knowledge it desires. He believes the most effective factor the U.S. authorities can do is instill harder knowledge privateness protections that U.S. firms should abide by.
“In any case, banning TikTok is only a Band-Support that can piss off lots of people. It is not even an excellent Band-Support and that is coming from somebody who thinks the app is each bit as unhealthy because the ‘authorities’ says it’s.”
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