Which is it, is Tik Tok safe to use or isn’t it? I can’t help thinking this is a bit late after 3+ years and millions of users but I can understand not having it on government devices.
I’d be supportive of a UK wide Tik Tok ban. I think The European Union and The American Federal Government are seriously considering it too.
It’s just too much of a security risk. With Tik Tok being owned by Tencent, a Chinese company with strong ties to the CCP, Tik Tok serves a means of spying on foreigners. China has laws meaning companies must hand over any data to the government if requested to do so.
Tik Tok collects a lot of private data from its users, including their IP address, their location and the app has access to the users phone camera.
Even without security concerns, Tik Tok is a terrible app. It is designed to be addictive, been the centre of countless scandals, countless harmful trends and has a grooming/predator problem. Their leadership seem unwilling to do anything about it.
With that said, The UK could look into creating its own virsion of Tik Tok which would be popular in English speaking countries. It could generate billions in revenue for The UK and boost The UK tech industry. Plus we can tackle many of the problems listed above.
T1kt0k is a cancer and we should rid it from this country
Wouldn’t side loading an .apk make this a futile thing to do?
I really don’t understand this one if I’m completely honest. Banning from government devices, sure. Agreed. Same reason Instagram and Facebook should be banned from government devices too. (And WhatsApp since our MPs can’t seem to stop using it).
But we’re banning it based on data it might be collecting for a government, right? So why are we not banning Facebook? We know for a fact it collects data illegally. We know for a fact it uses it to serve ads that are paid for by political parties. So whilst we’re discussing what TikTok might (let’s be honest – is almost certainly) doing, can we start encompassing all of the social media apps into the discussion? Or are we only worried about China? Given our own government wants to ban end to end encryption I don’t think we should be throwing stones too hard.
It is laughable that the tory government think they are capable of doing that.
Yes please, I want an ISP-level block of it in this country!
The teens who love it are just going to have to deal with it, I’m afraid. A replacement will quickly come along and fill the gap in the market for it, I’m sure…
Reposting my comment from another thread as it remains relevant:
As others are saying – Looking at Tiktok alone is a pretty crappy approach when we already know about the lax use of data in other social media platforms. It does feel like Tiktok is being singled out because it wasn’t developed/isn’t owned by a Western company rather than because it poses a security risk. Meta and Google products would likely also be disallowed under any framework that bans Tiktok. In theory, the safest practise would be for MPs to have work-phones which only operate on an intranet provided by parliament.
Aside from “security”, I also have to wonder if the UK government has looked at the US midterms and are looking for an excuse to ban an app that got a younger demographic mobilised, out and voting for centre, left and progressive policies.
To think China doesn’t already know everything they want to know about these baffoons lol
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Which is it, is Tik Tok safe to use or isn’t it? I can’t help thinking this is a bit late after 3+ years and millions of users but I can understand not having it on government devices.
I’d be supportive of a UK wide Tik Tok ban. I think The European Union and The American Federal Government are seriously considering it too.
It’s just too much of a security risk. With Tik Tok being owned by Tencent, a Chinese company with strong ties to the CCP, Tik Tok serves a means of spying on foreigners. China has laws meaning companies must hand over any data to the government if requested to do so.
Tik Tok collects a lot of private data from its users, including their IP address, their location and the app has access to the users phone camera.
Even without security concerns, Tik Tok is a terrible app. It is designed to be addictive, been the centre of countless scandals, countless harmful trends and has a grooming/predator problem. Their leadership seem unwilling to do anything about it.
With that said, The UK could look into creating its own virsion of Tik Tok which would be popular in English speaking countries. It could generate billions in revenue for The UK and boost The UK tech industry. Plus we can tackle many of the problems listed above.
T1kt0k is a cancer and we should rid it from this country
Wouldn’t side loading an .apk make this a futile thing to do?
I really don’t understand this one if I’m completely honest. Banning from government devices, sure. Agreed. Same reason Instagram and Facebook should be banned from government devices too. (And WhatsApp since our MPs can’t seem to stop using it).
But we’re banning it based on data it might be collecting for a government, right? So why are we not banning Facebook? We know for a fact it collects data illegally. We know for a fact it uses it to serve ads that are paid for by political parties. So whilst we’re discussing what TikTok might (let’s be honest – is almost certainly) doing, can we start encompassing all of the social media apps into the discussion? Or are we only worried about China? Given our own government wants to ban end to end encryption I don’t think we should be throwing stones too hard.
It is laughable that the tory government think they are capable of doing that.
Yes please, I want an ISP-level block of it in this country!
The teens who love it are just going to have to deal with it, I’m afraid. A replacement will quickly come along and fill the gap in the market for it, I’m sure…
Reposting my comment from another thread as it remains relevant:
As others are saying – Looking at Tiktok alone is a pretty crappy approach when we already know about the lax use of data in other social media platforms. It does feel like Tiktok is being singled out because it wasn’t developed/isn’t owned by a Western company rather than because it poses a security risk. Meta and Google products would likely also be disallowed under any framework that bans Tiktok. In theory, the safest practise would be for MPs to have work-phones which only operate on an intranet provided by parliament.
Aside from “security”, I also have to wonder if the UK government has looked at the US midterms and are looking for an excuse to ban an app that got a younger demographic mobilised, out and voting for centre, left and progressive policies.
To think China doesn’t already know everything they want to know about these baffoons lol