Why is TikTok Being Banned – is it Really That Bad?

As most of you probably know, TikTok is in the fight of its life. While, if Americans stop using it, that only represents a hundred million users, they are relatively speaking very wealthy and the data they represent is very useful.

While TikTok says it is not sharing your data with the Chinese government, China, just like the United States, forces companies to give them any data they ask for. While in the US there is a bit of a more formal process, the result is the same. Many people are okay with the US government getting there data – even though the government has a crappy track record of protecting it. Many are not so pleased.

The Chinese government has a much less formal process – as in, if you don’t cooperate, you might “disappear”. That is a strong motivator for Chinese companies to cooperate.

Conceptually, the data that TikTok collects is no different than the data that Facebook and others collect and sell. And China can easily buy or steal that data.

Many state and federal government entities have already banned TikTok from government devices. Of course, that is only a tiny fraction of the American devices that the app is installed on, so while removing it from those devices might help productivity a little bit, it won’t change the game.

China says that the US is insecure and that the ban is an abuse of state power. At the same time that China is making huge privacy demands on US companies operating in China. In fact, China’s own demands are so onerous that companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn and Airbnb have either left China or dramatically downsized. I think China speaks with forked tongue.

Perhaps the US is speaking with a forked tongue also, however.

The data that all social media companies collect and use to sell stuff to use, decide what content to show us and sell to third parties is very similar.

Maybe, if the US was really being honest, they would pass a strong national privacy law. That might happen, but the key word is strong and I doubt that any US national privacy law will be strong.

Why you ask? Because there is too much money at stake. Facebook says that it has lost $10 billion in ad revenue a year because Apple is forcing them to get Apple users’ permission to track them. 90+ percent say thanks but no thanks. But even with that, Facebook’s ad revenue is north of $80 billion a year. Do you think they might be able to buy a few votes with a tiny fraction of that money?

I think that the whole data collection industry needs to be revamped, but I am not convinced that the power players want that. After all, the US federal government is a huge data buyer. Why? Because they don’t need a warrant to buy your data.

If the feds pass a national privacy law that excludes them, well, that makes them look too much like China, and that doesn’t have good political optics.

Assuming the US bans TikTok, China will just continue to buy or steal our data.

At least if they are banned they won’t be able to spoon feed American citizens Chinese propaganda like they do now. That is probably a benefit.

This battle is not over; stay tuned. Credit: Security Week

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