The Dangers of TikTok

TikTok’s quirky and lighthearted videos may not seem like anything to be concerned about, but each time you click the little red “NEXT” button, your videos are sent to unknown authorities around the world. This is because the 15 second video-making app is owned by China and allegedly has Chinese surveillance software, which it uses to acquire personal information and send it in to the Chinese government. 

Misty Hong, a college student and resident of Palo Alto, California, filed a class-action lawsuit in late 2019 in the California Federal Court accusing TikTok of creating an account for her after she downloaded the app, saving her unsaved videos, and then sending them to the government in China. The lawsuit says that the app is collecting data to identify and track its users. They have access to every user’s phone number, email address, and even location. The videos which are taken in close proximity to the user’s face, also allow it to take note of their facial features. The suit alleges that, “TikTok also has surreptitiously taken user content, such as draft videos never intended for publication, without user knowledge or consent.” Hong claims that she filed the lawsuit on behalf of all U.S. residents who downloaded TikTok, which is around 110 million people.

TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, are currently under national security review; however, the app claims that it has distanced itself from its Chinese authorities, insisting that since its servers are located outside of the country, its data is not subject to Chinese law.

The popular app has recently reached 1.5 billion downloads worldwide, which surpasses Instagram, making it harder and harder for people to see the app for what it really is: dangerous.