Why TikTok should be Banned

Introduction

TikTok has recently become a household name and for good reason. As the brainchild of Beijing-based media company ByteDance, TikTok is an app that allows users to share short-form videos with audiences around the world. What makes TikTok stand out from the next social media platform is that it is incredibly user-friendly and allows video and content creators of all skill levels to create beautiful and unique pieces using its soundboard and special effects. Commonly, users will talk and dance to a song while another video plays alongside, although other formats, including duos, singing originals, skits, and multi-part stories, are also popular.

The trend of having someone else's video play within the frame makes TikTok one of the most communal apps, as older and newer accounts find a balance between the familiar and the unexpected. This trait has likely propelled it to such a coveted position in the social media world. And of course, as is to be expected, a sort of internet culture has developed, with countless trends, debates, and memes being born on the platform.

The culture surrounding TikTok is so vast, yet so specific, that it is no surprise that the vast majority of its users are under the age of 29; in fact, only about 14% of users are older than 29. This makes TikTok an early adopter’s paradise. There are influencers and celebrities, of course, as in any social media platform, but it is much easier to rise to a level of social media fame on this platform, which makes it attractive for newcomers to digital communication and content creation. In terms of sheer numbers, TikTok is currently in the number one spot as the most downloaded entertainment-based app on the planet. It has gained about three billion downloads, with about 20% occurring in the United States. It remains the 11th most downloaded app on the Apple App Store, having been downloaded in the millions today. In a given school (middle school, high school, or college), it is rare to find a student who does not have the app downloaded onto their smartphone. The consequences of one company with so many daily users internally and so much power over the world externally.

Concerns and Criticisms Surrounding TikTok

TikTok is a social media platform that has faced much criticism and concern since its debut. Data security and privacy issues have dogged the platform, partially for being owned by a Chinese parent company. In addition, the app’s algorithm drives controversy; algorithms affect users’ experiences when interacting with a respective social platform, influencing both what content is shown and the ease with which new accounts can receive visibility. Previously shared concerns extended to the possibility of TikTok spreading misinformation, especially during election periods. Now, many are expressing their concern about the app's potential negative impact on mental health. Young individuals and children, in particular, may be at risk of developing products of social media complexes like body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and depression.

There are concerns about the societal impacts of TikTok as well; many young users will "perform for the camera"; the obsession with visibility and recognition poses the same risks as celebrities once did. Cyberbullies and trolls pose a constant threat to TikTok users; the prevalence of both issues can disturb users and lead to a potential addiction. As with all fairly new phenomena in society, there are numerous critiques and potential detriments to the popular new app. These critiques of TikTok reflect wider anxieties about social media and advertising, which have propelled the app’s controversy and popularity alike. While TikTok can hardly be held responsible for all the claims, it is clear that it has indelibly shaped the rise of this intriguing, peculiar space.

The Case for Banning TikTok

TikTok’s activities in the United States have been subject to intense scrutiny from both a political and legal perspective. The political narrative has dominated much of the conversation around the social platform, with much of the conversation being related to culture. There have been threats to ban the app, with discussions around the acquisition of its US operations as a solution. Following a ban on the use of the platform by federal employees, calls for more comprehensive measures to regulate and potentially ban further usage have been floated.

These discussions stem from valid national security and data privacy concerns that the controversial social platform has continually faced. Observers argue that the level of personal and sensitive information that TikTok collects and has access to poses an inherent national security risk. With ownership of the platform, critics argue that there is potential for government influence, and may already have access to data residing on servers. This potential access to massive quantities of data gives rise to a certified or potential national security threat. Such a scenario marks an act of espionage that reaches further than any other modern-day efforts by foreign agents to access personal information. If a foreign company has access to quantities of data this large, then not only could the company itself engage in malicious activity, but the data could be accessed by foreign states and used to suppress individual civil liberties, disproportionate representation, and potentially even impact elections. As we’ve seen in recent years, cyber efforts to influence elections and policy have come under scrutiny.

Impact of Banning TikTok on Users

Banning TikTok is not merely limiting unnecessarily invasive software or governmental influence. Used primarily and with a completely different culture and product in the United States and internationally, both users and content creators will suffer as the app is now unavailable for download on new devices. Few apps can entirely substitute such a robust creative outlet, and losing TikTok means losing group dances, audio mashups, DIY recipes, and viral trends as an essential—and often comedic—form of self-expression. For the creators who peddle that content, they may move to an entirely new, less involved audience when they may not want to download TikTok’s current competitor, a copycat feature. This would also wipe out their ability to monetize their presence on the app and support themselves.

Though I have only ever created content from the consumer side, the community and support on TikTok are unparalleled. Whether it be a makeup creator with millions of followers or a crafter with a few thousand, they seem to glean some kind of fulfillment from their interactions to keep at it. Thus, it’s more than just a loss of community. From a privacy standpoint, this represents another consecutive loss of real-time user agency. Typically relegated to reactive news cycles and arms-length reporting, the denizens of the internet rarely get a say in how their respective platforms are run. While fringe sections of the web constantly stir murmurs over freedom of expression and claims of repression and censorship, tech companies, advertisers, and governments alike remain steadfast in the direction of product. If viral pushes and multiple-platform campaigns weren’t crucial to the affected user base, we wouldn’t see the people using TikTok threaten to pivot toward a fully different program. We’d see them abandon the space entirely, chalking the choice up to general app grievances.

Alternative Solutions

Our work has focused on the negative potential consequences of TikTok as it operates now in the US. We believe that constructing a pragmatic approach leads us to ask how we might readjust the operating environment while simultaneously addressing issues of national security and user privacy rights. To this end, several outcomes might have been generated from this critique: regulatory say in regulating users' rights on any platform could dictate not just whether the platform is allowed to operate domestically at all. Perhaps it is possible to identify and coordinate between regulatory frameworks in order to allow the platform to continue to operate, but with increased privacy protections or transparency regarding how the platform works and uses data. A collaboration model, inserting both governance and technology in a cooperative negotiation, might be reached to assert that users' data is handled in such a way that national security is not threatened.

Technology companies can and do regulate data, and can improve the user's capacity to negotiate the terms under which their data are processed if an independent investigative body is allowed to verify the actual processing of data against the law. Measures that could be put in place to further data rights protection can be proposed that protect all apps and platforms equally. Platforms and apps could be made to make their terms of service more easily navigable due to the fact that the scale and speed of app development have outstripped user education and understanding. Increased user education about their rights and ways to look after their data is also indicated. Particularly in the case of apportioning blame, the damage that can be done via apps to an individual is enormous compared to a company in an equivalent breach, and these fines should be imposed.

In the current digital landscape, banning the app for refusing to cooperate runs the risk of driving regulatory practices underground – users might have to curate fake identities to bypass increasingly stringent security checks, for example, risking well-intentioned non-standard action off the platforms for fear of violating regulations. Finally, future research could consider how the app would evolve and the governance of its user data, should TikTok be subject to data regulation, or even created by it.

Conclusion

Most platform-driven social media applications function as self-regulated ‘states’ with their own communities, individuals, systems of governance, and ‘security’ practices. The international-scale, cross-border mobility of such technologies makes them particularly difficult to regulate and shape. The possible lack of transparency does indeed cause concerns given the amount of user data involved, currently hosted in ‘communion’ under legislation. However, at the heart of this issue is the user concern over safeguarding their own privacy and that of the overarching user community. At the same time, the current research findings suggest that the majority of consumers using TikTok primarily in non-work contexts have never given security issues surrounding their data much thought. The development of app-secure environments is not simply a role for platform developers and/or compliance teams, as has been suggested in the literature, but also for the individual user.

Our approach is rooted in legal, ethical, and management science research, and takes a pragmatic route through the discussion to consider assuming that complete app data use in keeping with the platform’s expected scope is possible. We acknowledge the ethical concerns around making any assumptions in this regard. It is important to balance the user’s perspective with possible legal or national security concerns. Finally, we note that the technology policy with which we began our paper does have some relevance to the future even if this technology is not strictly conducive to the use of this app and its use can be vetoed.

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