TikTok may be banned because the bill to ban TikTok was recently passed on Tuesday, April 23rd, and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, April 24th. The law stipulates that ByteDance must sell TikTok to a new company within 9-12 months, or TikTok will be completely banned in the United States.
People have varying opinions on this. History teacher Christopher Zawadski agrees with the ban, “I am all for the TikTok ban.” He does not think that TikTok will go away: “I think it will just be sold off to another company.” He does, however, believe that it will eventually be replaced. “Apps over the years have come and gone. These apps have a point where they are not what they used to be.”
Some students at Morgan have a drastically different opinion. Sophomore Anthony Watrous thinks TikTok should not be banned. She said, “A lot of people make a living off of it.” He also pointed out that banning TikTok is taking away the voices of the masses. He believes that it is not dangerous: “TikTok doesn’t really pose much of a threat. There’s nothing really important going on there, so banning it is pretty pointless.” If TikTok gets banned, he thinks that most people will switch to Instagram and just use that. Sophomore Camryn Mazzarella has a similar opinion. “I don’t understand why TikTok is getting banned.” She has a similar opinion to Anthony in the sense that she believes TikTok does not pose a threat. She also thinks that TikTok is valuable. “Think about all of the content creators and the small businesses that thrive off of TikTok.” She said that there will be protests and riots if TikTok goes into a complete ban in the US. She agreed with Anthony that if TikTok is banned Instagram will replace TikTok.
Information Technology professional for Jared Eliot Middle School Christopher Barden has certifications in cybersecurity and has a variety of prior knowledge about technology. He believes that TikTok is dangerous to our private data. He said, “TikTok is owned by a Chinese company that potentially could be leaned on by the Chinese government to get the data of hundreds of millions of American citizens. They can also use the app to spread any propaganda that they want to distribute, since it will reach millions
of people.” He also says that TikTok is dangerous to national security. “ The Chinese Government could use TikTok for data that they sell of their users. This could be useful to them for many things, including identity theft, trade secrets, insider trading, data breeches, social engineering, and phishing scams.” He theorizes that TikTok will be replaced if it is banned in the US. He also believes that an app that replaces TikTok will likely be owned by a country in the European Union or a company in the United States and will be trusted by the government. There is great concern from users on TikTok that this violates the First Amendment, the right to free speech. Although, they will still be able to use Instagram and other social media apps after the TikTok ban.
According to the New York Times, TikTok was banned in India for similar reasons on June 29th, 2020. India has a population of 1.4 billion people, so it was TikTok’s biggest market. 200 million of TikTok’s users in 2020 came from India. TikTok was banned with 58 other Chinese apps after a conflict between India and China at their border. The Indian government claims that they banned TikTok because of “the data security of India”. 170 million of TikTok’s users are from America, close to India’s numbers. Many businesses operate off of TikTok, and one man’s career was ruined the day TikTok was banned in India. Veer Sharma was 26 when the app was banned. Sharma had 7 million followers at the time of the ban. He made a lot of money from the app because of his videos which became immensely popular. He was devastated by the ban, but Indians like Veer were able to recover quickly because of apps like Instagram with their feature called Instagram Reels. Reels is very similar to TikTok in the sense that it recommends videos based on an algorithm. (The New York Times)
This situation could foreshadow the future of the US if TikTok is banned. This gives hope to the content creators of TikTok, who can gain money from Instagram and YouTube. The smaller businesses that operate off of TikTok will be worse off than them, though. They mainly get sales off of TikTok and without the algorithm of TikTok that can easily make videos viral, these business owners will be in trouble. Regardless, these creators and businesses have plenty of time to find a new platform for their content and find another way to gain income.