The famous app Tik-Tok is facing a hard time recently. Starting with India now the US and Australia are also planning to ban the app in their countries. India took this major step recently as there is a disagreement is going on between both the nations. India banned 59 Chinese applications, which means these apps won’t function any further in India. The reason behind the banning of these applications tends to be the compromise of national safety.
After India made this decision of banning the Chinese apps now ore countries are moving forward and planning to ban these apps as they don’t want to compromise the safety of their citizens and the defense. The Chinese apps are being accused of sharing the user’s data with the Chinese government. The sharing of user’s data is a criminal offense and is also a violation of privacy. As a matter of national defense-security, these apps are now repelled by the user.
At this time, the US and Australia have been very vocal about the need to ban Chinese social media apps, indicating a hardening stance against China by an increasing number of countries. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that the US government is looking at banning Tik-Tok from their country and some other Chinese social media applications. Even in Australia, their call for banning Chinese applications like Tik-Tok by the government.
Both countries fear that the app developers are sharing user information with the Chinese government. One of the MP also said that this is an effort by the Chinese Communist Party to collect data of the user in other countries.
In China, the National Intelligence Law of 2017 governs that all tech companies that are based in China or are under Chinese ownership. It is mandatory for any business to share or provide the government with any data they ask for. The companies have to share anything and everything which the Chinese government may ask for.
Tik-Tok is owned by a Chinese tech company Bytedance. The company is continuously criticized by the US for being a threat to national security. They have alleged that companies like these share the user information with the Chinese government posing a great threat to the nation. Tik-Tok defending themselves says that their servers for the app are based outside China. They are not governed by Chinese law for any data sharing.
This decision of banning Tik-Tok from several countries has been creating trouble for the country. The banning of the application in several countries can result in the depriving of the audience base for the app. Hence the social media application is trying their best to defend themselves and protect their customer base.
According to reports, the company is saying that they will exit Hong Kong within the next few days. The company says they are pausing review of requests made by the Hong Kong government for user data as a reaction to the new national security laws that China has imposed in Hong Kong. They will be pausing their operations in Hong Kong due to the recent event that are taking place.
Tik-Tok is incredibly famous all around the world and the app has a huge fan base. According to the reports, in June the app has 39 million downloads on Android phones and 14 million downloads on iPhones. Globally, the app has 2 billion downloads on Android and iOS combined in just the first half of the year.
