Upgrade 04 / 04: another country joins the list of those who are banning TikTok, find the list at the end of the article.
You may remember when the Trump presidency decided on TikTok ban (and WeChat) and the possibility that ByteDance sell the social to a western company to prevent that from happening. There was talk of how Microsoft, Oracle and even Walmart could take over the platform, but it all came to nothing when the Biden presidency decided to lift the ban. However, the hypothesis of the threat to national security it officially reignited and led to the official blocking of the platform.
For the US, TikTok deserves a ban: a new chapter in the tech challenge with China
The US has decided, forcing the removal of TikTok from the devices of government agencies (including the White House and the Department of Defense) to safeguard sensitive data from possible acquisition by Chinese servers. This is by no means a large-scale ban, affecting a very small portion of all US smartphones, given that it will still be possible to use it normally outside the government, but it is still a choice that raises tension between the parties.
Concerns around TikTok have returned to being raised especially after the audio recordings leaked in which ByteDance engineers stated that "in China you can see everything“. Following this news, TikTok announced that it had eliminated all US user data from its data centers and had entrusted its management to the American cloud infrastructure Oracle. However, this was not enough to raise doubts around the Chinese social network, even after other reports in which ByteDance is accused of planning to use TikTok to monitor some specific American citizens.
It was again the US body that ruled on the matter FCC, according to which it would be better to ban TikTok, given the difficulties in reaching an agreement that concretely guarantees national security. It was always the FCC who tried to persuade Apple and Google by asking them to remove TikTok from their respective app stores, for now with negative results. And it is not the first time that the American body has moved in this direction, as has already happened to the detriment of 5G networks from Huawei and ZTE. The more time passes, the more the technological clash between the US and China is intensifying, as evidenced by the semiconductor crisis.
All countries that blocked TikTok
Following the choice of the United States, other parts of the world have also decided to do the same, putting on paper the blocking of TikTok from government smartphones, tablets and PCs. Here is the complete list of all the countries that have imposed complete or partial blocks of the Chinese ByteDance app:
- European Commission and Parliament
- Belgium
- France
- UK
- Scotland
- USA
- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Taiwan
- India
- Pakistan
- Afghanistan.
