No matter how malicious you think Google might be, there’s a website that’s even worse — and even more popular.
That website is TikTok, a social media app largely used by young children and teenagers that exploded in popularity a couple of years ago. In September, TikTok hit a new record, logging 1 billion users per month and more internet traffic than Google, which is the second most popular website in the world.
There’s just one problem. TikTok is owned by a technology company called ByteDance, which operates in lockstep with the Chinese Communist Party, according to former TikTok employees. As a result, the app has given China access to millions of Americans’ user data, TikTok insiders and U.S. government officials said.
TikTok has denied allegations that it feeds U.S. consumer data to the Chinese government, but the company’s own privacy policy states that it has the right to share all data it collects with its corporate group, which includes ByteDance. That means all of your data, including the kind of device you are using, your location, IP address, search history, messages, content preferences, and all sorts of other personal information, are signed over to a company that answers to the Chinese government as soon as you log on to the app.
It should come as no surprise, then, that as TikTok has grown in popularity, so too have concerns about the national security threat it might represent. Former President Donald Trump even sought to ban the company from the United States or force it to merge with a company based in the U.S. before he left office. President Joe Biden, however, repealed that order this past summer.
Whether the U.S. government takes TikTok seriously or not, the website clearly is not just an innocent social media app that features trendy dances and catchy songs. It might very well be spyware installed into the phones of millions upon millions of young people. And now it’s the most popular website in the world.
