Tick Tock, TikTok

After a dramatic rise in popularity over the last two years, booming app TikTok could be banned from American phones this year at President Trump’s demand due to an increase in national security concerns surrounding the app; in retaliation, ByteDance has decided to sue the Trump Administration.

TikTok's forerunner, Musical.ly, was created by a Shanghai-based company and released into the world around July 2014. The app would be launched onto US app stores a month later, but wouldn’t start booming in popularity until summer the following year. Savannah Bacorn, 8, does not have fond memories of Musical.ly, citing that it was a “cringe” era.

“Yes, very unfortunately, I did use TikTok when it was still Musical.ly,” said Bacorn. “We were all very cringe on Musical.ly and that era needed to come to an end.”

Rain’a Finegan, 9, remembers when Musical.ly was all the rage, before it made the transition to TikTok.

“I didn’t use Musical.ly, but I knew it existed,” said Finegan. “Both of my sisters used it when it was still under that title.”

Musical.ly’s raging success had caught the attention of many people- and not just in the United States. In November 2017, ByteDance Ltd., based in Beijing, bought out the Musical.ly app for one billion USD. The company later that year moved the Musical.ly app users to their already existing app TikTok, known as Douyin in China. Douyin, as of January 2020, has a daily Chinese user count of 400 million, and was released in September of 2016. It should also be noted that Musical.ly users were not moved to the original Chinese Douyin servers; most Musical.ly users had no clue that TikTok had a Chinese version and userbase.Bacorn was actually one of the few avid Musical.ly users who supported the Musical.ly/TikTok shift.

“I liked how it changed to TikTok,” said Bacorn. “Like I said, the Musical.ly era was very cringe, and needed to come to an end. It also automatically deleted my old Muscial.ly account, which I’m glad about.”

the first major consumer app to be banned in the US. The order was issued after numerous concerns came to light about the app's data collection, raising suspicions that the app was in fact Chinese spyware. Based in China with over a million users, ByteDance is legally required to forward all data that it collects to the Chinese government, regardless of where the data came from. Wary of an app that may be spying on Americans, Trump originally planned to simply ban the app, but was advised to instead offer the tech giant Microsoft to buy out the US data collection operations TikTok conducts.

ByteDance denies the allegations purported by the executive order, claiming that they do not share their data collection with the Chinese government. However, for many, this claim was debunked during the 2019 Hong Kong protests; during this Chinese conflict, the app was absent of any content regarding the protests, perhaps because TikTok didn’t want to be caught promoting anti-China content.

Ms. Briana Clarke, who teaches Biology and Chemistry here at Edgewood, actually used TikTok herself and was disheartened to hear about the proposed ban. She found sympathy among many of her students who also used the app.

“I was disappointed when I heard about the proposal because TikTok had become one of my main forms of entertainment during quarantine,” said Ms. Clarke. “I know many of them were upset and disappointed as well.”

Bacorn found the ban to be in poor taste, claiming that US companies don’t do any worse.

“I think that the ban is dumb,” said Bacorn. “I mean, who cares if China has TikToks of us dancing, and, literally, our data is getting stolen every single day in the US alone on our phones, so why does it matter if China has it?”

But the story doesn't end there. In response to the ban proposed by President Trump, ByteDance took legal action against the Trump Administration on Monday, August 24th in the Central District of California. TikTok claims Trump's executive order is “not rooted in bona fide national security concerns,” and that the US government’s decision making process in choosing to ban the app was unfair as it was absent of any kind of warning. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer resigned from his position as the company CEO after less than 6 months on the job, and some have suggested he made this move because he couldn’t handle the lawsuit. Some also speculate that the lawsuit could jack up the buyout price that Microsoft will have to pay, should they move to buy the app.

“Yeah, I heard TikTok was suing the government,” said Bacorn. “I think it is definitely justified if they can prove that they aren't stealing data and it is justified, because that would be taking 80 million content creators off their app for no reason.”

As of Friday, August 28th, popular American retail corporation Walmart has joined Microsoft in the pursuit of TikTok’s US operations. 10 days prior, American tech company Oracle also was revealed to be in talks with ByteDance for the sale of TikTok. Social media app Twitter had also expressed early interest, but “serious concerns” about its financial capacity for the deal were brought up and the plan was dropped. While the public has their eyes on Microsoft winning the bid, President Trump supposedly has Oracle in his favor. Not many people can take WalMart very seriously in this race, being the odd one out of the group as a retail store and not a tech company. While it is currently unknown who will come out on top, we do at least have an estimate of how much TikTok will sell for. This number could range anywhere from 5 to 40 billion USD, according to various sources.

While many people single out WalMart in this race to buy out TikTok as it’s the only non-tech company in the race, some people, such as Bacorn, don’t particularly like any candidate.

“If WalMart bought TikTok, well, I’d be concerned for anyone to buy TikTok,” said Bacorn. “I’m concerned that they would change it too much, y’know, and it would just be a whole different app.”

As of August 31st, China has created new policies and rules when it comes to technological exports. With these new rules, ByteDance may have to obtain a license before selling TikTok to an American company. A Chinese government official also reportedly told Xinhua News Agency, a chinese-run news outlet, that ByteDance should “seriously and cautiously” consider halting any and all talks of selling TikTok; however, it is currently unknown whether the Chinese government intends to block the sale altogether. Due to all the bumps in the road surrounding the sale of the app, many fear that the app could simply be shut down.

Finegan suspects her siblings will not take the ban lightly, as both of them have been using the app for at least 3 years.

“My little sister was yelling about it last time it almost happened,” Finegan said.

Bacorn says she and her friends have already planned to move to other separate apps if TikTok gets banned.

“If TikTok does get banned, we’re all moving to Byte,” said Bacorn. “I don’t know what it is, because I haven’t moved to it yet, but it’s just another content creating platform.

Clarke has her own idea as to where all the American TikTokers will move, should the app be banned in the US-- and it involves the extremely popular social media app Instagram.

“If TikTok gets banned they will find another platform to post their creative ideas,” said Clarke. “Instagram has already created a TikTok like add-on to their app called ‘reels’ that essentially does the same thing as TikTok.”

Ms. Deborah Woodside puts the safety of her students at the front of her mind when deciding what she thinks about the ban and if it should happen. As a deeply caring and protective individual, she would be more than happy to see it go if it means the better for her students.

“I was scared for my girls who had made and posted videos,” said Woodside. “Nowadays, this world has gone nuts and everything is up for review…. If banning TikTok will keep them safer, then it needs to be banned.”

UPDATE: As of Saturday, September 19th, President Trump has approved of a deal between TikTok and US tech company Oracle after extending the ban date from the 15th to the 19th. The deal will create a new US-based company called Global TikTok, although it still needs formal US approval. While the deal falls short of a full-blown TikTok sale, it seems to have still appeased the Trump Administration and their concerns about China harnessing data from the app’s users.