Discovering YOU Magazine April 2022 Issue | Página 47

FRANCINE SAYS

TikTok Possibly

being Banned in

the United States

Article by Francine Houston

Facebook went down on March 5, 2024, due to a woman hacking into its system. Everyone I knew was devastated. I could only imagine what would happen if they permanently took a social media app away from us. Now I am informed there is a possibility that TikTok can be banned from the United States by the House of Representatives if the app isn’t sold by its Chinese parent company.

This app contains an extensive amount of personal information of the user's data that was collected by ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company that is starting to look like a national security threat to the United States.

ByteDance has six months to get rid of TikTok under a proposed legislation or

face a nationwide ban. If the U.S. bans TikTok it’s predicted to disappear since the parent company would exhaust all options to keep the app legal

To sell the issue would not solve the issue but became a step in the right direction. It would solve the problem of the Chinese authorities having American data. This reminds me of how most people are cautious of Temu for the same reason, too much access to people’s information.

A new fear is if TikTok gets a new owner that America’s personal information could illegally be given to the Chinese government according to Ivan Tsarynny, a cybersecurity expert. Tsarynny testified before the House committee to recommend that TikTok be sold or banned in the United States.

"A new fear is if TikTok gets a new owner that America’s personal information could illegally be given to the Chinese..."