Moreover, TikTok users spent over 850 minutes per day watching short videos from all over the world. The recent appearance of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew before the US Senate may have helped to make him an icon in the app, but it appears to have done little to ease concerns among cybersecurity groups.TikTok is a rapidly growing social media app with over 732 monthly active users.

On one hand, regular users would seem less susceptible to any potential interference in this respect – but then again, if you extend the logic that it could be used to spy on government employees, what about their family and their friends? There could be reason to institute broader bans – which is what the US Government is now mulling over as we head into the Easter break.Īnd you can bet that if the White House bans the app outright, most of these regions will follow suit. The question now is whether those concerns extend to regular users, and in particular, youngsters using the app to connect and share with friends. That indicates that the intelligence community has clearly expressed concerns about the app. The Australian Government’s decision now means that a ll members of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence sharing network (Australia, Canada, the US, the UK and New Zealand) have moved to ban the app from government devices. And really, why do government employees need TikTok on their official devices anyway?

While much of TikTok’s counter-offensive has focused on how other social media apps gather up user data as well, the concern here is that TikTok information could potentially be shared with Chinese authorities, which could then see it used against government employees, who may be in a position to influence policy.Īs such, there’s clear logic to removing TikTok from government staff devices specifically.

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