A preliminary deal to sell the platform to Microsoft was submitted to President Trump for review, in which Microsoft would also assume data management responsibilities. On August 1, ByteDance agreed to divest TikTok outright to prevent a ban in the United States. Later that day, President Trump announced plans to ban TikTok in the United States and signaled opposition to any sale to a U.S.-based company.
operations as soon as August 1 if the company does not comply. On the 31st of July, President Donald Trump announced a decision ordering China’s ByteDance to divest ownership of the application and threatened to shut down its U.S.
In particular, it was comparatively less than that collected by Facebook. Many noted that the amount of collected data was similar to that collected by American-originated social media platforms. Tech experts could not adequately verify the claims that user data collected by TikTok was being used or collected by the Government of China. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo announced that the government was considering banning TikTok. But its privacy policy has reserved the right to share any information with Chinese authorities. They included armed forces personnel and its alleged ability to convey location, image and biometric data to its Chinese parent company, which is legally unable to refuse to share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law.īyteDance claims that TikTok is not available in China and its data is stored outside of China. In June 2020, the European Data Protection Board announced that it would assemble a task force to examine Tik Tok’s user privacy and security practices. In May 2020, the Dutch Data Protection Authority announced an investigation into TikTok in relation to privacy protections for children. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticized the app, calling it “ spyware“. In January 2020, Check Point Research discovered a security flaw in TikTok which could have allowed hackers access to user accounts using SMS. Web developers, Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk claimed that allowing videos and other content being shared by the app’s users through HTTP puts the users’ data privacy at risk. In its privacy policy, TikTok lists that it collects the following information: usage information, IP addresses, a user’s mobile carrier, unique device identifiers, keystroke patterns, and location data, among other data. Privacy concerns have also been brought up regarding the app. Several users have reported endemic cyberbullying on TikTok, including racism. Journalists in several countries have raised privacy concerns about the app, because it is popular with children and has the potential to be used by sexual predators. There have been temporary blocks and warnings issued by countries including Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan over the content concerns. It is thought to be obscene, immoral, vulgar and encouraging of pornography. Many countries showed concerns regarding the content of TikTok. Tik Tok has been criticized by US senators for censorship, privacy and child safety. Since June 2020, Kevin Mayer is CEO of TikTok and COO of parent company ByteDance. It was also the most-downloaded app on the App Store in 20. In 2019, media outlets cited Tik Tok as the 7th-most-downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019. In February 2019, TikTok, together with Douyin, hit one billion downloads globally.
As of 2018, it was available in over 150 markets and in 75 languages. The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds.Īfter merging with musical.ly in August, downloads rose and TikTok became the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018. However, it only became available worldwide, after merging with Musical.ly on August 2, 2018. Later, it was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android. ByteDance first launched Douyin( Chinese version of Tiktok ) in September 2016. It is owned by ByteDance which is a China-Beijing based technology company. Tiktok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service.