TikTok bans explained: Everything you need to know

Why does the U.S. want to ban TikTok?

The United States wants to ban the application for several reasons, but mainly due to national security concerns. U.S. lawmakers are concerned that ByteDance may leak U.S. user data to the Chinese government if the Chinese government forced them to.

"Today, the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party's] laws require Chinese companies like ByteDance to spy on their behalf," Committee Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said during the hearing.

Shou Zi Chew told U.S. lawmakers that China-based ByteDance employees would have access to some U.S. TikTok user data until Project Texas is implemented. TikTok does not condone any effort by its own employees to access U.S. user data.

TikTok releases a transparency report where it discloses formal legal requests for user data. The biannual information request report shows how many requests were made in each country. According to the latest report, requests for information by law enforcement reached an all-time high in the first half of 2022, with 4,054 total requests around the globe.

Every testimonial in the five-hour congressional hearing touched on different topics, but some of the main focuses included the following:

• Addictiveness. While TikTok's addictiveness is a concern, it has a feature that tells users to leave the application after 60 minutes.
• Misinformation. TikTok claims it does not allow misinformation as part of its community guidelines and actively works to remove it. It also does not accept political ads.
• Children's safety. There are many concerns over children abusing or misusing the application. However, TikTok has different UX for users under 13. For example, they cannot go viral and cannot use the private messaging feature.
• Mental health. Content that promotes eating disorders, tobacco use or suicide is a concern. However, TikTok -- like most social media companies -- has a content moderation policy and aims to remove all violating content.
• Selling data. Gathering and selling data that TikTok doesn't need to make a profit is a concern. TikTok claims it does not sell data to data brokers.
• Data security. Data leaks are a concern. Data leaks are a risk with any online service and common with social media. TikTok -- and other social media platforms -- use data access protocols to protect and organize data into categories of sensitivity.

The U.S. already bans the application on federal and public sector employees' phones and on state employees' phones in 32 of 50 states. Several states have also recently sued TikTok. The first state to sue the company was Indiana, on claims that the application serves users inappropriate content and violates consumer protection laws in its data collection practices. Another lawsuit came from Arkansas, which sued TikTok, ByteDance and Facebook's parent company, Meta, over claims that the companies violate the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Montana was the first U.S. state to pass legislation banning TikTok on all personal devices. The bill was to go into effect in January 2024, but a federal judge temporarily blocked the ban in November 2023, saying it likely violated the First Amendment. The law would have prevented the app from operating within the state and fined app stores that hosted TikTok within state lines up to $10,000 per day. A final decision in the matter will be made following a trial expected sometime in 2024.

Several universities have also banned the app on their networks.

Who might buy TikTok?

The value of TikTok has been estimated as high as $100 billion, raising the question of who would buy if ByteDance is willing to sell. That’s more than twice the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid for Twitter in 2022.

That would limit potential buyers to the world’s richest individuals -- a consortium of investors or tech giants. Several individuals have publicly or reportedly expressed interest in putting together a group to purchase TikTok from ByteDance. They include the following:

• Steven Mnuchin, an investment banker and former U.S. Treasury Secretary.
• Chris Pavlovski, CEO of online video platform Rumble, who has suggested including Rumble in a consortium to purchase TikTok.
• Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.
• Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary.

Microsoft, Oracle, X (formerly Twitter) and Walmart have also all been mentioned as potential TikTok buyers. Google and Meta have been mentioned as possible suitors but might face antitrust hurdles.

What countries is TikTok banned in?

The United States is not the only country that has full or partial TikTok bans in place. Partial bans are usually limited to government or public sector employees. Full bans apply to all citizens.

Some countries have full bans on TikTok, including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal and Somalia.

Regions with partial bans and the devices they're banned on include the following:

• Australia -- on devices issued by some individual government agencies.
• Belgium -- on federal government work devices.
• Canada -- on government-issued devices.
• Denmark -- on Defense Ministry staff devices.
• European Union -- on Parliament, Commission and EU Council staff devices.
• France -- on professional phones of civil servants.
• Latvia -- on work devices at the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• New Zealand -- on Parliament members' and lawmakers' work devices.
• Norway -- on government work devices.
• Taiwan -- on government devices.
• United Kingdom -- on government devices.
• United States -- on federal government devices and systems.

Other countries have banned TikTok in the past and have since rescinded the bans. Two examples are Indonesia and Pakistan, which both banned the application temporarily due to explicit content.

How would the U.S. enforce a ban?

It's unclear how the United States would prohibit citizens from using the application on their personal devices. Forcing popular app stores such as Google Play and Apple App Store, to remove the app from their platforms would make it much harder to acquire the app but wouldn't remove it from phones that already have it downloaded. On phones with the app installed, there would be no more updates or new features, and the apps would slowly become harder to use.

Another possible scenario involves forcing internet and telecommunications providers to block TikTok, which would make it impossible to use. The Indian government blocked TikTok entirely using this method.

A third option involves criminalizing the application, which has been done before but not with an application anywhere near the size of TikTok.

What types of data does TikTok collect?

One point of contention is the safety of TikTok's recommendation engine. The recommendation engine uses behavioral data to determine the user's interests and feed them relevant content. Some data that TikTok uses to do this is the following:

• How long a user stays on a page.
• If a user shares a video.
• If a user swipes away from a video.
• If a user comments on a video.
• If a user likes a video.
• Basic login information, such as name, age, phone number and email address.
• Location data.
• IP address.
• Biometric data.

Dispersion mechanisms are used to keep the user from seeing repetitive content. TikTok's data collection protocols are available in full on its privacy policy page.

Challenges of banning TikTok

One of the main challenges of banning TikTok is alienating young users politically. TikTok's user base skews young. To ban access to the app would negatively influence a lot of young voters who enjoy the app.

Another challenge is that many SMBs rely on the platform for their business model. Many multinational corporations also have their own TikTok accounts and rely on the platform for some portion of business. There are petitions to save the app and protests against the ban, with support from lawmakers as well.

A third challenge of banning TikTok is gathering and presenting evidence that the application is a national security threat or a danger to users in some way. This would involve differentiating the application from other social media companies, such as Meta and Twitter, that also collect user data; are vulnerable to breaches and privacy concerns; and are -- to a degree -- under the control of their operating country's government.

The investigation into TikTok has reinvigorated a larger conversation about data privacy on all social platforms, sparking calls for data privacy law reform.

TikTok vs. Douyin

Both TikTok and Douyin are owned by ByteDance.

While TikTok is not available in mainland China, Douyin is a short-form video application that is often portrayed as the Chinese version of TikTok. Douyin has to follow Chinese media laws, and a Chinese phone number is required to download Douyin. TikTok is available in many countries around the world and is beholden to the laws of the country it operates in.

Douyin has more features than TikTok. For example, Douyin has hotel booking and e-payment features in the application. It also offers full-length movies, in addition to standard short-form video. Douyin preceded TikTok. Douyin was launched in 2016, whereas TikTok was launched in 2017.

ByteDance owns other apps as well. At the time of this writing, its newest is Lemon8, a health, fitness and wellness app.