This is how it is now

America is not that interested in TikTok app. It is very popular, but it is not of American origin, as are most of the technologies used in that country. And, especially in the home country of TikTok’s publisher, Bytedance, TikTok is now such a problem for the US that it has everything to do with it. That is China. The result? Fear of spying, US now wants to ban TikTok. But, is it possible?

TikTok is banned

In principle, the US will be very difficult for companies from other countries. In fact, it has done it before. It has completely eclipsed the success of Huawei smartphones. Huawei doesn’t have permission to use Google services, so the whole Android becomes complicated, and many applications also use Google services, for example to determine the location of the phone user. The US has shown in the past that it can be ruthless against Chinese companies, so why not again?

TikTok seems to have a slightly fairer chance: for example, the CEO had to make his point in Congress last week. Or, he was actually questioned about technology for 4.5 hours. Some surprising statements and facts emerged from this. It became painfully clear that regulators in the US were indeed anti-TikTok. The use was viewed with great skepticism by both Republicans and Democrats.

America vs China

It is special that such a ‘common enemy’ brings together two arch-enemies. Not to mention that there are 150 million Americans who love TikTok and there are 5 million companies on TikTok from the country. One thing was clearly focused on, and that was the collective anti-politics against TikTok.

Now things aren’t going well, no mistake. TikTok has employees in China with access to some US data. TikTok has already proposed a solution to this in the form of Project Texas, whereby American TikTok data is located in the US and stored in Oracle, but this project is not yet fully operational. That doesn’t help TikTok: After all, the bottom line: If TikTok employees in China can see the data, so can people from the Chinese government.

And then Facebook?

TikTok has one thing up its sleeve that’s already been sorted here and there: Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. That’s not right either, he mentioned it a few times while being thoroughly grilled by congressmen. Cambridge Analytica is also a British company, so it is also an international affair, for which Facebook of course had to appear at the conference, but that came very easily.

Now US policymakers must decide what to do with TikTok. Still a total ban? Given last week’s situation, this should not surprise us. On the other hand, TikTok’s CEO played very favorably into the hands of the outside world, but was mainly shocked by the quality of the questions asked of the best man, which has now made him a sort of achiever. Stardom rather than creating the bogeyman America wants to put down.