The Biggest TikTok Trend Is to Ban TikTok

Nowadays, it’s common to follow trends on TikTok. However, a new trend emerged recently, which is not an easy thing to notice directly on the TikTok app. The trend is that EVERYONE WANTS TO BAN TIKTOK!

Surprised?

India has already banned TikTok. The USA, EU, and Australia are thinking of doing the same. What is wrong with TikTok, one of the most popular apps in the world? Let us tell you everything in detail!

On June 30^th, India’s government bans TikTok

Well, to be clear, they did not just ban TikTok but also 58 more Chinese-made applications.

The Indian Ministry of the Interior and the Computer Incident Response Team (CERT-IN) believe that these mobile applications pose a threat to national security and “stole and secretly transmitted user data.” Previously, the whole world complained about Facebook, but now, the biggest question the world has is, why exactly were Chinese applications banned?

Perhaps the Indian authorities were affected by the Sino-Indian Border Conflict in the disputed region of Ladakh. Shortly before this decision, on June 16^th, the first deadly clash between the Chinese and Indian militaries took place there, as a result of which 20 Indians have died. In India, mass protests began with a call to boycott Chinese-made goods. For example, in Lucknow and Mumbai, protesters smashed phones and burned other electronics made in China. The world’s most populous democracy could not ignore the call of the people to have China take responsibility for its violence and protect the national security of India. That is why TikTok is no longer in India.

The US “is looking” at banning TikTok

On July 7^th, the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he wants to ban TikTok for U.S. users.

The United States did not succumb to the world’s hype over TikTok. Authorities have had a suspicion that the application illegally collects confidential information about users. And not without cause!

Back in February 2018 in the United States, TikTok was convicted of illegally collecting data from children under the age of 13 without the consent of their parents. Developers then fined $5.7 million, but that was only the beginning.

At the end of December 2019, the U.S. Army forbade its employees to use TikTok, as U.S. authorities suspected the application was stealing user data.

In January 2020, employees of the State Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were banned from using TikTok on office devices.

Now, the U.S. government, represented by Trump and Pompeo, claims that the data of users of TikTok and other Chinese applications are in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party and that this not only helps China win the political and economic confrontation with the United States but also poses a direct threat to national security.

TikTok is leaving Hong Kong

On July 7^th, the TikTok administration announced that it was phasing out its activities in Hong Kong. After India’s decision, it looks like China is putting a spoke in its own wheel. But things are more complicated!

Autonomous Hong Kong has been fighting for its state independence from China for a long time, which the authoritarian communist country is trying to strangle in the bud. On June 30^th, China issued the Hong Kong National Security Law, which criminalizes calls for country independence and criticism of China’s central authorities. They also demanded that Internet providers remove information that the PRC authorities would consider subversive and provide the police with information about users.

In general, if activists put forward a call for independence for Hong Kong on TikTok, a social network headquartered in Beijing could not help but obey the law and would have to hand over all the data of peaceful protesters to the authorities of China, where the death penalty still takes place. Therefore, TikTok decided to save the lives of activists and its international reputation.

EU initiated TikTok check on the illegal collection of users’ data

The EU suspected something was wrong when the whole world was shocked by the scandal of the spread of misinformation by the Chinese authorities about COVID-19. Did TikTok spread or forbid this misinformation? No one can say for sure.

How the video ranking algorithm works is not yet clear. However, the fact that TikTok did not have hashtags from Hong Kong activists (while there were a few of them on Twitter) raises even more suspicions that the Chinese authorities may be deleting information and using social networks for propaganda.

The European Data Protection Committee created a working group to check TikTok for the illegal collection of personal data of users in order to understand how to regulate the operation of social networks in the EU. It happened a month ago, but there have been no results so far. So, stay tuned!

A hacker on Reddit exposed how TikTok works

An amateur hacker, under the nickname Bangorlol, discussed on Reddit how the TikTok application actually works.

“TikTok is a data collection service masquerading as a social network,” states Bangorlol.

He claims that TikTok collects:

• Names (real), addresses, passwords, phone numbers, and dates of birth.
• Information about other applications on the phone (even deleted ones).
• Information about Internet activity.
• Location (updates every 30 seconds).

The hacker also found code fragments in the Android version that allow downloading a file from a remote server to a user’s device.

In the research of Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk from a couple of months ago, TikTok got into a list of 54 iOS applications that tracked sensitive data, such as passwords, crypto-wallets, credit card numbers, addresses, and private messages.

A recent report by Ars Technica states that TikTok has access to the most important data of Apple users on all devices. iPhone and Mac on the same Apple ID use a universal clipboard, so the contents of the “working computer” can be copied to the phone where TikTok is installed and the application has no barriers to reading information.

Will TikTok be banned?

We do not know.

We hope not; we have just registered an account there recently! The good news is, even if this happens, personal videos from celebrities are still available on Payphone X, and they can be shared on any social network.

Therefore, TikTok is not the only app out there! After all, Payphone X does not meddle in politics and does not cooperate with any governments. We aim to build a global fan community, and we hope that you will support us on our path.

Photo by Kon Karampelas