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The Biggest Problem with the TikTok Ban


3m read
·Nov 4, 2024

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On the 23rd of March 2023, Tick Tock CEO Show 2 testified before the U.S. Congress as the country intensifies its efforts to ban Tick Tock. Tick Tock has been the most downloaded app in the United States since 2021, with around 150 million American users. If this new law was passed, all of those people, including tens of millions who have built communities and livelihoods on the app, will no longer have access to it. In an instant, everything they've ever built on the app—gone.

I'll be the first to say that Tick Tock isn't the best app out there. We've made several videos about how dangerous it is, especially for young people. But the truth is that banning Tick Tock doesn't solve the problems we and many others have highlighted concerning the app. What's worse is that in an effort to ban just one app, U.S. Congress might be opening a can of worms, one with far more sinister consequences.

The case for banning Tick Tock is presented as a national security issue. Tick Tock captures tons of user data on Americans, but ByteDance, Tick Tock's parent company, is a Chinese company headquartered in Beijing. Like any other Chinese company, it is subject to national security law that requires it to hand over user data anytime the Chinese government requests it. Simply put, if the Chinese government wants your Tick Tock user data, they can collect it, and there's nothing Tick Tock or ByteDance can do about it. This includes data such as your email address, what websites you visit, and even your location within a small radius.

For most of us, this isn't too much of an issue. But the more popular Tick Tock gets, the more people—like politicians, journalists, and activists—are incentivized to use the platform to reach their audience. Those people are at risk of getting doxxed or, even worse, attacked.

Tick Tock CEO insists that the platform hasn't spied on Americans on behalf of the Chinese government, but that doesn't mean they won't in the future. In fact, for all we know, he might not have been telling the truth. It wouldn't be the first time a CEO has used slippery language to avoid admitting a hard truth. But would banning Tick Tock really prevent American user data from getting into the hands of the Chinese government? And why should we care anyway?

One of the biggest problems with Tick Tock is how easy it is to spend hours scrolling through silly videos instead of doing something productive. But with the sponsor of today's video, brilliant.org, it's now equally easy to spend your time on screen learning anything and everything STEM-related. Brilliant divides the lessons into manageable chunks that you can consume anywhere and at any time, even if you've just got 15 minutes to spare. Whether you're on your daily commute or you're waiting for a friend, you can easily open the app on your phone and do a quick lesson instead of spending that time scrolling through social media mindlessly.

Brilliant currently offers thousands of lessons, from foundational and advanced math to AI, data science, neural networks, and more, with new ones added every single month. You have the opportunity to learn a wide range of amazing topics to give you a better understanding of how the world works. I've recently been fascinated by artificial intelligence—from ChatGPT to DALL·E 2 and Midjourney. Taking Brilliant's AI courses allowed me to learn so much about this new technology that is revolutionizing how our world works, which in turn made it possible for me to share that knowledge with you in my videos.

If you want to learn more about these mysterious things that are currently taking over our society, I highly recommend you check out this course. It's completely free to start with Brilliant, offering a no-risk 30-day free trial, which you can get by going to brilliant.org/aperture. The first 200 people to visit also get $20 off a premium subscription, which unlocks every single course Brilliant has to offer.

The truth is, Chinese intelligence has been engaging in significant acts of espionage for the last decade. Notably, they've stolen personal records from Anthem health insurance, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and...

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