TikTok has been experiencing success of unprecedented magnitude for years. The platform from developer ByteDance shot up like a mushroom and managed to surpass every established name. Still, there’s a good chance the application will disappear from your iPhone.
Since the success of TikTok, there have been major concerns, especially in the United States. This has everything to do with the fact that the application is Chinese-brokered and does not seem to take things very closely with privacy rules. Something that could really go into a tailspin.
Will TikTok disappear from your iPhone?
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, has openly written a letter to Apple and Google. According to the member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the companies would do well to remove TikTok from their digital stores. Logically, we are talking about the App Store of the iPhone and Google Play Store of Android smartphones.
Bennet shares the concerns that a lot of his colleagues also have: Chinese TikTok would know too much about its (in this case American) users. Those concerns, by the way, are not recent in nature, as Americans have actually been worried for years. Donald Trump, for example, also tried to ban the app during his time as president.
China has access to everything
Yet in recent weeks, concerns seem to be growing. Last June, a “shocking” story appeared on BuzzFeed News, in which TikTok engineers shone light on the amount of data the app collects. “Everything is seen in China,” one of them revealed at the time. “Main administrator China has access to everything.”
Since then, both Democrats and Republicans in the United States have been very concerned. They believe, for example, that TikTok should be more closely monitored or even completely removed from the country.
TikTok on your smartphone. (Image: Pexels)
But this is the US, what about in the Netherlands
The US House Foreign Affairs Committee is going to vote on the fate of TikTok later this month, but are we here in the Netherlands going to notice anything at all?
Although the Dutch government is not always guided by the United States, it usually keeps a close eye on such matters. When ex-President Donald Trump banned Huawei as a company in his country, the Netherlands eventually decided to say goodbye as well. This can be seen, for example, in the 5G equipment in transmission towers. Where this equipment was previously Huawei’s, several telecom companies are replacing it with Ericsson’s equipment.
Should the United States seriously ban TikTok from the iPhone, it is quite likely that the Netherlands will follow suit. Especially when there is enough evidence of sloppy handling of usage data.
When and if this will happen is not clear at this time. Time will tell.
