European regulators hit the China-owned app TikTok with a $368 million fine on Friday for failing to protect children’s privacy on the platform. This is reportedly first time that the Chinese app has been punished over Europe’s strict data privacy rules.
In yet another sign of the Biden Administration’s determination to control, censor, and spy on American social media users, the draft of a proposed deal between Chinese-owned TikTok and the Biden administration shows the latter requesting extraordinary authority over the platform.
A draft of China-owned TikTok’s plan to avoid a ban reportedly gives the United States government oversight power over the platform.
Nearly half of American adults support a ban of the Chinese-owned app TikTok, a social media platform wildly popular among young people, which has shown itself to be a national security threat and a danger to children and teens.
There are many concerns about the China-owned app TikTok, such as its effects on mental health and it being a national security risk, but researchers are also interested in how it impacts kids’ brains after they binge-watch the app’s nonstop stream of addicting videos. They have nicknamed the result “TikTok Brain,” and it is impacting the lives of young Americans.
China-owned TikTok is pushing a slew of Chinese propaganda advertisements to millions of Europeans in recent months. The ads tout everything from support of Chinese coronavirus lockdowns to presenting the Xinjiang region, where Uyghur minorities are forced to work in concentration camps, as a wonderful tourist destination.
A majority of Americas see China-owned TikTok as a threat to the national security of the United States, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.
A former ByteDance executive says the Chinese Communist Party was able to access the personal data of TikTok users in Hong Kong in 2018.
TikTok Inc filed a lawsuit against the state of Montana’s ban on the short-form video platform, arguing the ban violates the First Amendment.
Montana has become the first U.S. state to ban the China-owned app TikTok. Governor Greg Gianforte (R) announced Wednesday that he has singed legislation in order to protect his state’s residents from “the Chinese Communist Party.”
A UK journalist recently discovered that employees of China’s TikTok were tracking her personal data through an account devoted to her cat, without her knowledge or consent. Chinese employees of the company were attempting to determine who was meeting with the journalist by comparing her location to employee locations — even though the account didn’t have her name on it.
A U.S.-based employee of ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, told an undercover Project Veritas journalist that he is sure a lot of TikTok’s coding is “very beneficial to China,” and said the Washington, D.C. team works “directly with the FBI” to “take down” people like Andrew Tate.
In the latest Drill Down podcast, acclaimed investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and co-host Eggers dig into the Washington D.C. special interests standing behind TikTok in the battle to ban the Chinese social giant in the U.S.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said over the weekend that she does not support a total ban on the Chinese social media app TikTok, claiming it would be “unprecedented.”
House members on both sides of the political aisle have become increasingly wary of TikTok, and after a much-anticipated hearing with the app’s CEO on Thursday, calls for an outright ban of the app have grown.
Chinese-owned TikTok reportedly paid for the transportation of popular influencers on its platform to appear in Washington as the company’s CEO appeared before congress.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on Thursday was an “abject disaster” for TikTok, and even appeared to result in lawmakers announcing their support for banning the China-owned app, according to one former Politico writer, and many other verified users on Twitter seem to agree.
China’s government said on Thursday that it would oppose any forced sale the United States plans to impose on TikTok’s Chinese owner in order for the social media platform to continue to be used within the country, given the security risk.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew admitted to Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks that the Chinese app tracks users’ keystrokes during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on Thursday.
Rep. Kat Cammack pressed TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew during a congressional hearing Thursday on the fact that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has access to data of the millions of Americans who use the popular app.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday that “spying” is not the right word for alleged Chinese surveillance of Americans using his company’s social media platform.
While most lawmakers focused on TikTok’s ties to communist China at today’s hearing with its CEO, Shou Zi Chew, Congresswomen Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) focused on what, for them, appeared to be a more important priority: stopping algorithms from becoming racist.
Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) slammed TikTok CEO Shou Chew during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on Thursday over the death of a 10-year-old girl after she attempted the “blackout” challenge that was trending on the China-owned app.
Former Trump official Keith Krach says China’s TikTok app is a “digital virus” that preys on children, and is “disguised as candy, but it’s actually cocaine.”
New York Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman has positioned himself as a TikTok ally as both parties on Capitol Hill debate whether or not to ban the Chinese-controlled platform entirely for national security purposes.
A recent report from the Wall Street Journal claims that web-tracking code from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has been discovered on 30 state government websites across 27 U.S. states.
It only takes ten minutes after creating an account on China’s TikTok app for the platform’s algorithm to begin pushing suicide videos to 13-year-old children.
The FBI and DOJ have reportedly launched investigations into TikTok’s parent company over allegations of spying on journalists, including Americans.
ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, has recently come under pressure from the Biden administration to sell its megapopular video platform or face a ban in the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal.
An ex-employee of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of social media app TikTok, claims that the company misrepresents the degree of privacy protection between the data of U.S. users and that of its owner in China and employs proprietary Chinese software that might have backdoors.
China-owned TikTok is trouncing its competitors in in-app purchases (IAPs), generating more revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 than its top four competitors combined.
The far-left ACLU is urging Congress not to ban the China-owned social media platform TikTok, saying that prohibiting the app owned by a hostile foreign nation would violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.
Mercedes-Benz plans to integrate China’s TikTok into the dashboards of certain models, drawing the ire of people who consider the Chinese-owned social media app nothing more than a surveillance tool.
U.S. policymakers are increasingly worried about the possible Chinese influence over what American users see on the popular video app TikTok. A growing number of conservatives including Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Tim Scott (R-FL) are calling for the Chinese-owned app wildly popular with teenagers to be banned entirely.
The COO of the China-owned social media platform TikTok announced on Monday that she now identifies as “both a woman and non-binary,” and has “updated” her “personal pronouns,” revealing she now uses both “they/them and she/her” pronouns.
Chinese-owned social media company TikTok has reportedly launched a new “Transparency and Accountability Center” in an effort to address concerns about the national security implications of allowing the app accused of spying on Americans to operate in the United States.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear before a House panel in March as Congress weighs security concerns with the Chinese-owned app and considers legislation to potentially ban the app nationwide.
China’s TikTok has confirmed that some of its employees have the ability to make certain videos go viral. The company claims it wields this power to “introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said on Tuesday he will introduce legislation to ban TikTok nationwide, charging that it violates the privacy of Americans.
A 12-year-old girl in Argentina has died after participating in the deadly “choking challenge” first popularized on the China-owned app TikTok.