On March 13, 2024, the House voted to approve a measure stating the ban of TikTok from operating in the United States. Many of you reading this have heard of or used tiktok at least once in your lives. I’m sure plenty of you are concerned as to why the US wants to ban TikTok and this is because the US legislators are suspicious of the company ByteDance, being controlled by the Chinese government to hand over data. If this is true, more than 170 million American people could be having their personal information spread. TikTok claims it has not been asked for data yet and it wouldn’t share it if told, but the issue is that if Chinese Authorities ask for information, ByteDance would have to hand it over.

ByteDance was given the opportunity to either sell TikTok in the next 6 months, or lose all its web-hosting services in the US. ByteDance is forced to comply within 165 days. The Chinese government has claimed to be opposed to a forced sale. Though Tiktok has no plans of a forced sale, they do hope to challenge it. Previous efforts of banning TikTok in the US have been deemed unconstitutional and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has hopes of it happening again.

There have even been polls taken upon this TikTok ban. US adults are torn as 31% believe TikTok should have a nationwide ban while 35% claim to oppose a ban. 73% of daily TikTok users oppose this ban as well.

Sources:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/03/13/is-tiktok-banned-what-to-know/72957680007/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-ban-go-into-effect-senate/