TikTok is still yet to secure its operations in the US, especially with government officials convinced that the app is a threat to US citizens' security. In hopes that the bill to ban the app would not go through, TikTok is rallying support among its users.
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TikTok Asks Users For Support
A lot of the most popular TikTok users come from the US, and it's safe to say that banning the app would result in many content creators losing a huge source of income. That and the opportunity to express one's self is the point that TikTok is using to rile up users.
US users of the app received a notification on Wednesday, which warns that Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok in the country, which would result in 170 million Americans being stripped of their Constitutional right to free expression.
On top of that, the company expressed that it would "damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience. The statement was concluded with a strong statement.
It states: "Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO," as shown in The Verge. Looking at the big picture, it's easy to say that banning the app completely would be a very difficult task, especially since people have grown used to TikTok being part of their day-to-day,
It all boils down to the White House's support for the bipartisan bill called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which demands that TikTok should separate itself from ByteDance, a Beijing-based company.
The action is from the concerns over ByteDance collecting US user data and providing them to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the accusation that China is using TikTok to manipulate young users in the US.
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Montana's Case
A national ban might be more difficult to accomplish, especially since a ban in one state is already complicated enough. Montana is the first to implement a complete ban on the app state-wide, and everything did not exactly go swimmingly.
A federal judge has banned the law that aims to get rid of TikTok in Montana, which halted the initial plan of having TikTok removed by January 1st, 2024. US District Judge Donald Molloy said that it "likely violates the First Amendment," as per NPR.
Even if Montana had authority over foreign affairs, which it did not, Judge Molly expressed that the national security case presented against TikTok was unconvincing and that Montana had a "pervasive undertone of anti-Chinese sentiment."
That's not to say that ByteDance is faultless. It has been proven that two of its employees, without authorization, accessed the data of two journalists in the US for the sake of identifying who leaked an internal report that harmed the company's reputation.
Since then, the US users' data has been placed in US-based servers that are owned by Oracle. Obviously, this measure was not enough to convince the government that the app was already secure enough and that China no longer had access to its data.
Related: Washington Warns TikTok to Break Away from China or Face US Ban
