TikTok Bans: Why Some Say The App Is A Security Risk

The pending American ban on TikTok has dominated headlines for several years and is still in limbo, but the United States isn’t the only country that’s concerned about the supposed security risk posed by the social media platform.

Nearly a dozen smaller countries (plus India) have banned the use of the app, with many citing worries about security risks or data privacy. Even more telling: for the same reasons, the majority of Western nations (including the US, the UK, the European Union, and Australia) have prohibited the installation and use of TikTok on government devices.

There’s plenty of smoke surrounding this TikTok controversy — but is there fire? Let’s find out.

Why is TikTok Said to Be a Security Risk?

The story begins in China.

That nation’s laws not only encourage private companies to “cooperate” with the country’s Communist government, but require them to hand over all of the data they possess when the government wants it.

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is a Chinese company and subject to all of the nation’s laws. In short, all TikTok user data would have to be turned over to the Chinese government on demand.

That’s a lot of users and a lot of data. More than two billion people and businesses worldwide have TikTok accounts, and the platform arguably collects more data on its users — not only identifying personal data, but browsing and viewing histories, locations, devices used — than any competitor. 

China, of course, is considered to be an adversary by most other developed nations. And those countries’ governments fear that access to detailed data on their citizens could be used to conduct Chinese surveillance, espionage, blackmail, and other operations that could compromise their national security.

There’s another issue that concerns Western nations. Documents leaked in 2019 showed that TikTok instructed its moderators to censor TikTok posts that were critical of China’s government, raising concerns about the possibility of TikTok content being manipulated for the purposes of disseminating political propaganda, misinformation, or disinformation.

Finally, there has been evidence of governments seeking to sway elections in other countries with Internet and social media campaigns, and security officials around the world are concerned that TikTok could be (or already has been) used in election interference campaigns.

It all comes back to China, though, which is why the American ban that’s still in abeyance (as of this writing) specifies that TikTok can only continue US operations if the app is divested to an approved buyer in a non-adversarial nation. If the American ban finally takes effect, expect at least some other allies to follow suit.