Reasons Behind Current And Proposed TikTok Bans

There are already partial or complete TikTok bans in many countries.

Seven nations have banned the use of the social media platform over the last few years: India, Albania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, and Nepal. Their varied justifications include claims about the app’s influence on youth, violations of Islamic law, the spread of Western or terrorist propaganda, or immoral content.

Iran’s reason is different, and it’s the same reason that more than a dozen other countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Belgium, and Australia have prohibited the installation or use of TikTok on government phones and devices.

Those nations are all concerned about national security implications — the same reason that the US has approved a complete ban on TikTok that remains pending as of this writing.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

TikTok and China

TikTok has about two billion users worldwide and is known for its short videos that often focus on lip-syncing and dance routines, tutorials, and other entertaining and seemingly innocuous topics.

What would the app be a possible threat to national security in America and other developed nations? The answer involves the platform’s ownership.

TikTok was developed by — and is still owned by — ByteDance, a Chinese company. The key to the controversy is China’s government, which requires that all of the nation’s companies (or individuals, for that matter) fully cooperate with any governmental request. And the nations worried about TikTok’s popularity among their citizens see that as deeply problematic.

The app, and by extension, ByteDance, collects an enormous amount of personal information from TikTok users. Some of that data might be sensitive, but that doesn’t matter. China’s laws could force ByteDance to turn over all of the information it collects to that nation’s government without notifying users or other countries of the data “compromise.”

Many national security officials around the world believe Byte Dance could also be required to manipulate TikTok content and even change the app’s algorithms to suit China’s national interest.

With 33% of all American adults currently using the platform (and similar percentages in most other Western nations), that raises the concerning possibility that China’s government could gather intelligence and spread misinformation in the US and elsewhere simply by accessing ByteDance’s stored data and weaponizing TikTok.

That’s why so many countries now ban the use of the app on government phones and tablets; those devices could be a fruitful target for intelligence-gathering operations.

America took its concerns a step further, approving a full ban on TikTok use in the nation unless ByteDance sells TikTok to a government-approved buyer. The US Supreme Court has ruled that the ban is constitutional, but the Trump administration is not enforcing the ban for the time being.

What Happens Next?

The TikTok ban was due to take effect in January 2025. However, efforts are reportedly still underway to broker a deal between American investors and ByteDance, so the deadline for enforcement of the US ban has already been postponed several times. TikTok remains available to American users in the interim.

Given the unpredictable nature of the current American government, it’s impossible to predict when, or if, the US ban will take effect. If it does, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other countries tighten their own restrictions or even ban TikTok as well.