Unfortunately this is primarily a political effort that is going to have dramatic impacts throughout tech if it continues...and it seems to be escalating with the latest Executive Orders.
Everything from a factual (a/k/a someone has done a technical analysis and looked at the apps/data) perspective on TikTok shows a social network that works just like the others (though arguably tracks less data about users). Similarly, technical analysis of their apps shows a lot of common practices that happen regularly on desktop/mobile/web where a ton of telemetry is sent back to the support service.
The only difference is the corporate lineage. The parent company being on a jurisdiction seen as "bad" by another jurisdiction. So it's very much an "this is ok with WE do it but not you" type of situation.
Specific to TikTok, the biggest issues is censorship and that is very much a matter of geopolitics. The American view point of near unbounded free speech is unique in the world. Most other western countries have significantly stronger stances on hate speech. China has officially taken a different approach.
Regardless of your politics, this is the latest collision of the old geopolitical viewpoint smashing into the internet worldview.
Modern tech and commerce is so intertwined, that this type of "ban" (and the subsequent "Clean Network" effort from the US State Department), is going to have so many second and third order impacts that it's almost impossible to full comprehend the true result. Oh, and most tech hardware is manufactured in China.
If you want a cybersecurity & privacy view of TikTok specifically, check out this video on my YouTube channel; youtu.be/cqhtl1OsOxg
If you want a glimpse at how messy this will get, check out the Wikipedia entry for Tencent to see how many companies they are financially involved with (currently exempt from the Executive Order based on a White House statement but for how long?); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent
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Unfortunately this is primarily a political effort that is going to have dramatic impacts throughout tech if it continues...and it seems to be escalating with the latest Executive Orders.
Everything from a factual (a/k/a someone has done a technical analysis and looked at the apps/data) perspective on TikTok shows a social network that works just like the others (though arguably tracks less data about users). Similarly, technical analysis of their apps shows a lot of common practices that happen regularly on desktop/mobile/web where a ton of telemetry is sent back to the support service.
The only difference is the corporate lineage. The parent company being on a jurisdiction seen as "bad" by another jurisdiction. So it's very much an "this is ok with WE do it but not you" type of situation.
Specific to TikTok, the biggest issues is censorship and that is very much a matter of geopolitics. The American view point of near unbounded free speech is unique in the world. Most other western countries have significantly stronger stances on hate speech. China has officially taken a different approach.
Regardless of your politics, this is the latest collision of the old geopolitical viewpoint smashing into the internet worldview.
Modern tech and commerce is so intertwined, that this type of "ban" (and the subsequent "Clean Network" effort from the US State Department), is going to have so many second and third order impacts that it's almost impossible to full comprehend the true result. Oh, and most tech hardware is manufactured in China.
If you want a cybersecurity & privacy view of TikTok specifically, check out this video on my YouTube channel; youtu.be/cqhtl1OsOxg
If you want a glimpse at how messy this will get, check out the Wikipedia entry for Tencent to see how many companies they are financially involved with (currently exempt from the Executive Order based on a White House statement but for how long?); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent