TikTok Trial: What it Means for the Future of the Social Media App...
TikTok, the popular social media app, has been in the news lately due to its ongoing trial. Here's why they're on trial and what could happen if the trial doesn't go their way...
Happy New Week,
TikTok, the popular social media app, has been in the news lately due to its ongoing trial. The app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has faced intense scrutiny from the U.S. government over concerns regarding data privacy and national security.
In August 2020, President Trump signed an executive order that gave TikTok until September 20th to sell its U.S. operations to an American company or face a ban. This resulted in an intense bidding war between major tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart, all competing to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations.
However, the situation has taken a turn with the recent ruling by a U.S. federal judge, who blocked the Trump Administration's efforts to effectively ban TikTok in the country. The judge believed that the U.S. government had a lack of evidence that TikTok posed a national security threat to the U.S. But the battle is far from over.
The U.S. government has appealed the judge’s decision, and a final court decision on the matter is still pending. The TikTok trial has major implications for the future of social media. It highlights the growing concerns over data privacy and national security in an increasingly digital world and raises questions about the power and influence of social media companies.
Many experts argue that the trial is part of a larger trend, as countries around the world grapple with how to regulate social media companies that operate across borders, posing unique challenges to traditional legal frameworks.
The trial also underscores the growing importance of social media in shaping public opinion, particularly among younger generations. TikTok has quickly become one of the most influential and widely-used social media platforms in the world, with over 800 million active users globally and 150 million users alone from the US.
As the trial continues to unfold, it remains to be seen what will ultimately happen to TikTok and its millions of users. But one thing is clear: the TikTok trial has brought to light many important questions and challenges that will continue to shape the future of social media and digital privacy in the years to come.
I’m a huge fan of TikTok, it’s currently my favourite social media app. I’m a huge fan because there are endless amounts of entertaining, educational, and engaging content on there. TikTok has an audience for everything, there's food content, sports content, comedic content, and many more. There’s content for everyone. A lot of people still view TikTok as a dancing platform for kids but it’s really a platform for learning, connecting, creativity, conversation, and exchanging ideas.
In this day and age, social media is more than just a social media app. Data is the new currency and TikTok isn’t the only platform dealing with American data this way. Meta, Microsoft, and Google do the exact same thing but there’s a lot of scrutiny falling on TikTok because they are not an American country. Not to get too political, but there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes, and I feel like there’s definitely a bigger motive at hand here.
I believe the outcome the U.S. congress wants is for TikTok to be acquired by a U.S. company for their operations in the country but that doesn’t really change the security risk that the government claims to have concerns over. Plus, we’ve seen how U.S. companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have mishandled data in the past.
If the US does ban TikTok, it may remove it from the Apple and Google app stores. That would prevent users from getting updates and new users from signing up. The U.S. also might ban U.S. companies from doing business with TikTok, which would hit TikTok’s advertising business but also affect a lot of US businesses and creators too. We’ve seen a lot of local businesses and content creators blow up due to the power of TikTok.
With how influential TikTok is, especially after surpassing Google and becoming the top search engine. I personally don’t see how the US can ban TikTok, but one can’t be too certain. Can’t put anything past the people in charge in that country or this one to be fair. A final decision is yet to be made on the trial, so we just have to wait and see how things unfold.
Have a great week!