© AP / Michael Dwyer
The White House Office of Management and Budget issued guidance on Monday giving all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok from employees' devices. Mandated by Congress, the move follows similar guidance by the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department, all of which cited alleged data harvesting by the Chinese-developed app.
"How unsure of itself can the world's top superpower be to fear a favorite app of young people like that?" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a press briefing on Tuesday.
"The US has been over-stretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress foreign companies," she continued. "We firmly oppose those wrong actions. The US government should respect the principles of market economy and fair competition."
More than a billion people worldwide use TikTok every month, and the video-sharing platform is currently the most-downloaded social media app in the US, according to analysis from SimilarWeb. Accusations of espionage have dogged its developer, ByteDance, since its international launch in 2017, and the Trump administration mulled a national ban in 2020.
While the ban was stalled by a court order and eventually nixed by President Joe Biden, accusations persisted, and FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last year that "the Chinese government could use [TikTok] to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations."
The Chinese government and TikTok have repeatedly denied using the app for surveillance or intelligence-gathering purposes.
The Canadian government announced on Monday that it too would ban TikTok from government devices, and both bans came several days after the European Commission ordered its employees to uninstall TikTok from work devices.
Reader Comments
My main concern has been that children love it. They like the "stupid" acting and dancing. As you note it makes kids dumber.
I try not to use Google as much as I can get away with it. I would completely de-google my home, but it's very difficult and causes issues with normal use of the internet [Link] I also won't buy an iPhone again because of their planned obsolescence practices, which leaves me with Google entangled Android unless I want to spend more than an iPhone costs for a secure phone.
I think the problem with tiktok might be that it's so appealing to kids, so when young adults start faking mental illness (there is a trend of people sharing their "alters" of dissociative disorders and fake Tourette's tics), the kids consuming them don't know to call them out. And the kids are also indoctrinated not to call people out because it's "ableist." I hope this isn't a problem in other countries, but I'm sure Canada has the same problem because of their strict "human rights" tribunal laws they put on the books a couple years back that have basically turned Canada into an authoritarian regime.
I mean, the dumbing down is a real problem all around, but TikTok seems like an obvious place to start... though any legislation targeting them should address the same concerns with any company and how it uses the data it collects and where it is stored. TikTok violated American laws by have a back door to data by the Chinese devs after lying about that back door. And TikTok in particular requires more permissions that are irrelevant to the functioning of the app than any of the primary social media apps.
You are observing the effects of Winston Smith's work in real time. As your fellow countryman laid out almost 80 years ago ...
For the rest, I can't really comment. Those social media stuff like fakebook, twatter, tiktok and the like just annoys me...
But I guess you got my point - as others have noticed, Google/YT are constantly removing "inconvenient" videos and search results. The same style as described in Orwell's book as "memory hole". Being schooled in Europe, I was mainly teached British English in school. And later on spent some time in the UK, semi-voluntarily. I learned about American English mostly from movies and later the internet.
It seems your style and grammar is more similiar to British English, but I might be wrong here. And this statement contains no judgement ...
And by the way, my wife knows a few recipes for pirogs as well. This think this pastry is known in some form the whole slavic world.
Normally, the giveaway would be how I spell words, but I just came to realize that while the British typically use "ise" instead of "ize," I also use analogue, dialogue, which are British spellings.
I must admit with English as my second foreign language, I often take the first spelling that either comes to my mind, or is listed in the dictionary ... Which is not very consistant in this regard.
Translation on request ...
...
YOU ARE A TRAITOR!
==================
When you hear enemy transmitters
If you believe enemy slogans
If you spread enemy message
If you give instructions to follow the enemy
If you act with the enemy
If you also wear the mask of the "man of integrity", the philanthropist, you will not escape us. We jerk fast and safe understand?
Traitors belong on the gallows
And mostly snitched on by neighbors.