U.S., Allies Ban TikTok: Freedom of Speech?

Date: 28 February 2023 - 21:55

News ID: ۱۱۲۹۴۰

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The White House gave federal agencies 30 days to purge Chinese-owned video-snippet sharing app TikTok from all government-issued devices, setting a deadline to comply with a ban ordered by the U.S. Congress.
Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young in a memorandum called on government agencies within 30 days to “remove and disallow installations” of the application on agency-owned or operated IT devices, and to “prohibit internet traffic” from such devices to the app.
Owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, TikTok has become a political target, with Washington claiming that the app can be circumvented for spying or propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The House Foreign Affairs Committee was set to vote Tuesday on a bill to give President Joe Biden new powers to ban the app, which is used by more than 100 million Americans. A ban would require passage by the full House and the Senate before the president could sign it into law.
The American Civil Liberties Union urged Congress not to ban TikTok, saying it would violate the free speech rights of millions of Americans.
A TikTok ban would “limit Americans’ political discussion, artistic expression, free exchange of ideas — and even prevent people from posting cute animal videos and memes,” the ACLU said in a letter to lawmakers. “Americans have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions with people around the country and around the world,” it added.
“It would be unfortunate if the House Foreign Affairs Committee were to censor millions of Americans, and do so based not on actual intelligence, but on a basic misunderstanding of our corporate structure,” TikTok said Monday, adding that it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts.
China’s foreign ministry slammed the ban.
“We firmly oppose the wrong practice of the United States to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power, and unreasonably suppress firms from other countries,” spokeswoman Mao Ning said Tuesday.
The law signed by U.S. President Joe Biden last month bans the use of TikTok on government-issued devices. It also bans TikTok use in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
The Canadian government also banned

TikTok from all of its phones and other devices.

Effective Tuesday, “the TikTok application will be removed from government-issued mobile devices. Users of these devices will also be blocked from downloading the application in the future,” the government said in a statement.

The European Commission banned the app from its equipment too.

TikTok’s breakneck rise from a niche video-sharing app to global social media behemoth has brought plenty of scrutiny in the West.

The company has always denied turning over personal information to the Chinese authorities. TikTok has moved to soothe purported U.S. fears, announcing in June 2022 that it would store all data on American users on U.S.-based servers.

Bans have not halted TikTok’s growth.

With more than one billion active users it is the sixth-most used social platform in the world, according to the We Are Social marketing agency.

Although it lags behind the likes of Meta’s long-dominant trio of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, its growth among young people far outstrips its competitors.