The United States Government wants to crack down on the popular app, TikTok. The U.S. senate could soon vote on a bill to force the sale of the app, or potentially ban in the country. The company is trying to rally support from users but in Florida not everyone would be sad to see the app go.
Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to force the owners of TikTok to sell the app or face being banned in the United States. President Joe Biden has announced that he will sign the bill into law should it pass the Senate.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company based in China. The United States government believes the social media app poses a security threat. That concern is shared by David Merrick, the director of the emergency management and security program at Florida State University.
Aside from what's being collected, it could be used at a tool for misinformation and disinformation," he said, referring to USER data collected by the APP.
Merrick says the biggest concern of lawmakers is that China can use the app to plant misinformation, particularly during an election season. TikTok collects data, such as user locations and interests, but so do a lot of companies, said Merrick.
“There are a lot of American companies or European companies that are collecting the same information if not more and then selling it, so will banning TikTok improve the security of the United States? No, probably not."
TikTok is trying to push back against Congress by rallying support from users like Florida A&M University student Cameryn Harper. She's a big user of the app, and in a sign of how the app has come to dominate the social media market, "a lot of people use TikTok more than they use Google," said Harper.
The loss of the app, she says will take away a prominent resource that she and others use to receive information. She's not worried about the data privacy concerns.
“I kinda found out how to turn that [data tracking] off a long time ago. To let them read the data… I forgot what it was called but someone made a video about that as well. That’s what I'm saying, they put a lot of important stuff on there," she said.
Florida State University student McDaniel Sumrall has a different take. He says he won’t miss TikTok should it get banned. He supports the initiative by lawmakers to force a sale and is already skeptical about what he sees on the app, believing a lot of what users see on the app is misinformation.
“A lot of these TikTok-ers or influencers are not necessarily credited sources, they’re not trustworthy, they’re not journalists," he said.
Last year, the state of Florida attempted to block the app on public school owned Wifi networks and devices. But that’s had little effect on students using the app—they currently circumvent it by using their private data plans on their cell phones. And should a federal ban pass, McDaniel believes there are ways around that too—like using VPN’s, or virtual private networks. Still, he believes the overall effort to curb TikTok is worth it.
The app not the only one facing scrutiny. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard lawsuits over data privacy and content moderation policies at X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. It’s all part of growing concerns over how much influence such platforms have on both public opinion, and perception.
