On January 18th, at approximately 10:30pm EST in the United States of America, the US government banned TikTok, but Donald Trump brought it back. TikTok was temporarily banned because of the US government’s concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the government of the People’s Republic of China. TikTok voluntarily shut down its servers ahead of the ban.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms. It was first released in September of 2016. There were some issues with Donald Trump and TikTok; he almost banned it in 2020.
Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, in 2012. In 2015, ByteDance launched TikTok in the app store.
The US lawmakers want to ban TikTok because of national security concerns. US lawmakers think that ByteDance might leak US user data to the Chinese government if forced to. They’re also worried that China could use TikTok content recommendations to fuel misinformation.
I interviewed Nicholas O to get his thoughts and he said this about the TikTok ban: “I think that banning TikTok was a bad idea because a lot of kids like to watch TikTok to relax and they can learn about all sorts of things. I also hope that somebody such as Donald Trump can bring it back.”
Maria S also had some words to say about TikTok. “I think TikTok should not get banned because it keeps us entertained. I also think that TikTok teaches us new things like what’s happening around the world.”
