The US may ban Tiktok – 100 million users in the country

Leksand extended the winning streak beat AIK

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives in the United States will discuss a proposal to give Joe Biden the power to ban Tiktok, which is owned by a Chinese company, throughout the country.

– In the United States, it is political suicide right now to be seen acting nice to China in any way, says SVT’s USA correspondent Fouad Youcefi.

The background is the amount of user data that Tiktok collects and the concern that the Chinese state will be able to take part of it as Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company.

– A republican said that this is like having a spy balloon in his phone, says Fouad Youcefi.

However, banning the app nationwide would be a big project when 100 million Americans use Tiktok.

Content-based algorithm

What made the app so popular, according to Svenska Dagbladet’s tech reporter Sophia Sinclair, has to do with how Tiktok’s algorithm differs from other social media.

– It rewards content that users are interested in and not who you follow or who you interact with, she says.

Whether the Chinese government has actually gained access to Tiktok’s user data is unclear.

– What is known now is that Tiktok employees in China could gain access to user data. But at the moment there is no concrete evidence that there have been influence campaigns or that the Chinese regime has actually had access to data from Tiktok.

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