US TikTok ban?

President Biden is looking at banning TikTok in the US if Chinese company ByteDance does not sell its app. The Biden administration is worried about national security concerns that TikTok has presented with its rapid data collection from users. The government believes that the popular app could be used by Chinese spies to gather intel on the US or spread propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party.

This isn’t the first time TikTok has been under fire. The Trump administration also threatened to ban TikTok back in 2020. India has already banned TikTok after a border dispute with China in 2020. India has also banned 200 other Chinese apps since, including WeChat. Since the ban, Instagram has benefited the most with Meta jumping at the opportunity to fill the hole. However, a lot of creators who relied on TikTok for an income were left without a job and had to scramble to find other ways to make a living.

There are no finalized plans about how the ban might be instituted. The most likely course of action is that TikTok could be banned from the app stores. This could technically mean the app is still functional for users until it stops working from a lack of software updates. This means that the concerns over security threats would still be present for a while.

The whole situation is tied to the current relationship between the US and China, so it truly depends on any situations that may arise that would call for an emergency ban of the app, but until then, users are once again are waiting to see what the future holds for this app.