Germany also decided to ban government officials from using TikTok, while the Chinese social network considered it a danger in terms of espionage risks. As Der Tagesspiegel reports, Berlin thus joins the list of governments and institutions following the US example, which in recent years has been the first to ban the practice, whose population has dwindled among young (and not so young) youth.
Launched by the company ByteDance five years ago, the Chinese platform has about 1.5 billion regular users and is especially popular with teenagers and young adults. The sharing of videos on the Internet is not only relevant to people in this category, but also a trend that reaches the ranks of civil servants. As TikTok is subject to Chinese national security laws, it is feared that this could force ByteDance to hand over data collected through the app to authorities in Beijing.
This is why concerns about its use have gained ground among various Western governments. The company argued that it was never asked for such a request by the regime, and on the contrary, it usually keeps the information of non-Chinese users securely.
And Germany is just one of the newest countries and institutions to ban TikTok from their officials’ phones. Just last week, the European Commission took a similar decision, with many parts of the United States federal government, as well as the governments of Canada, Denmark and Latvia banning or otherwise asking staff and staff of the app, agency and agency not to use it. Parliamentarians are also discussed in the Netherlands, but no official ban has yet been introduced.
Precisely in the US, the pressure for a nationwide ban continues to mount, and in that regard, Republicans on Wednesday passed legislation authorizing US President Joe Biden to ban the app from being installed on any mobile device. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the committee that sponsored the bill, described TikTok as “the spy bubble on your phone.”
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
