It is thought that China would prefer to ban TikTok rather than let it fall into US hands

Is Russia Ready to Attack Nuclear Forces in the War of Ukraine? An Analysis with the China-Based Technicolor Company TikTok

According to TikTok there is no US user data stored in China and that information is not shared with the Chinese government. The company made a promise to address any security concerns raised at both the federal and state levels as a result of Congress passing the spending bill.

As recently as December, Forbes reported that ByteDance employees inappropriately obtained data collected from US users. At least two reporters had their data viewed by ByteDance employees who were investigating past leaks of internal company documents. ByteDance confirmed the reporting and said it had fired all four employees who participated in the scheme, two of whom worked in China.

As the war in Russia drags on, Ukrainian forces have proved to be resilient and able to mount a series of counterattacks. There is an ominous phase of drone warfare entering the conflict. Russia has begun launching attacks with Iranian “suicide drones” to cause damage that is difficult to defend against. With Russian president Vladimir Putin escalating his rhetoric about the potential for a nuclear strike, and NATO officials watching closely for any signs of movement, we examine what indicators are available to the global community in assessing whether Russia is actually preparing to use nuclear weapons.

Keeping Your Email Safe: A Survey of the Vice Society’s Hats-Off-the-Pack Breathing Gangs in the Encyclopedia

While Microsoft’s Exchange server on- premises email hosting service has been vulnerable to a variety of vulnerabilities, the platform isn’t getting the development resources it needs, so customers should seriously consider moving to the cloud. A new study looks into how the custodians of the encyclopedia ferret out state-sponsored misinformation in their entries.

According to researchers, middle-of-the-pack gangs like the Vice Society are maximizing profits and minimizing their exposure by investing very little in technical innovation if they are worried about the threat of ransomware attacks around the world. They don’t focus on sectors that get a lot of money, they just focus on operations that can be useful to health care and education. If you’re looking to do something for your personal security, we’ve got a guide to ditching passwords and setting up “passkeys” on Android and Google Chrome.

But wait, there’s more! Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click here to read the full stories. Stay safe out there.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-bytedance-americans-data-security-roundup/

SoCradar: An Internet of Things Security Labeling Initiative (ISOCRadar) Report on September 24th, 2016 by Microsoft

The data of some prospective customers was exposed due to a misconfiguration. Researchers from the threat intelligence firm SOCRadar disclosed the leak to Microsoft on September 24, and the company quickly closed the exposure. The exposed information spans back as far as this year, according to the report. The researchers linked the data to more than 65,000 organizations from 111 countries. The Microsoft said the exposed details included names, phone numbers, email addresses, and files sent between potential customers and Microsoft or its authorized partners. Cloud misconfigurations are a longstanding security risk that have led to countless exposures and, sometimes, breaches.

There are no easy answers to improve the longstanding security dumpster fire created by cheap, undefended internet of things devices in homes and businesses around the world. After many problems, Singapore and Germany have found that they can add security labels to internet-connected video cameras. The labels give consumers a better understanding of the protections built into different devices, and gives manufacturers an incentive to improve their practices and get a gold seal. The United States took an important step this week. The White House announced that they would be creating a labeling scheme for the Internet of Things. The administration met with industry organizations and companies to discuss standards and guidelines for the labels. The National Security Council believes a labeling program to secure these devices would provide consumers with peace of mind that the technology being brought into their homes is safe and that retailers would be able to market secure devices.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-bytedance-americans-data-security-roundup/

The Washington Post, Mar-a-Lago, and the Silicon Valley: State and local actions against a cyber-attacking tech giant

According to the Washington Post this week, sensitive information related to Iran’s nuclear program and the United States’ own intelligence operations in China were included in documents that the FBI seized this summer from Mar-a-Lago, former President Trump’s Florida estate. Unauthorized disclosures of specific information in the documents poses a number of risks. People aiding US intelligence efforts could be endangered, and collection methods could be compromised,” the Post wrote. The information could also potentially motivate retaliation by other countries against the US.

The irony is largely lost on many in Congress. The lawmakers want the Biden administration to force a break-up of the Chinese-owned tech company and are renewing their calls for a nationwide TikTok ban. Meanwhile, efforts to pass a national privacy law, which failed last year, have largely evaporated.

The proposed legislation would “block and prohibit all transactions” in the United States by social media companies with at least one million monthly users that are based in, or under the “substantial influence” of, countries that are considered foreign adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

At the state level, sixteen Republican governors have recently taken the same action as the U.S Senate considers banning TikTok on federal devices.

The video streaming giant is putting resources towards convincing the public that TikTok is a safe place to spend time and money.

McQuaide said the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies will continue to be briefed on by members of Congress.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

TikTok: Is It Really a Red Scare? Why Facebook and Twitter are a Pandora’s Box for Social Media

It’s use is alarming to government officials. In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that the app could be used to control users’ devices.

The Senate-passed bill gives exceptions for law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities.

In just two years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has roughly tripled, from 3% in 2020 to 10% in 2022. The video-sharing platform has reported high earnings the past year and has become especially popular among teens – two-thirds of whom report using it in some way – as well as young adults.

On March 10, two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House convened a Zoom call with 30 prominent TikTok creators. Jen Psaki, then the White House press secretary, and members of the National Security Council staff briefed the creators, who together had tens of millions of followers, on the latest news from the conflict and the White House’s goals and priorities. The meeting followed a similar effort the previous summer, in which the White House recruited dozens of TikTokers to help encourage young people to get vaccinated against Covid.

Employees in China accessed the data of users who were journalists reporting on company leaks, which is being investigated by the DOJ.

Most drastic measures haven’t progressed since the efforts lacked the political will and courts stopped them.

The panic about TikTok is overstated. While some data concerns exist—though none more extreme than those over any US-based social media platforms—policies and discourse around TikTok in politics amount to a modern-day Red Scare. American politicians don’t want to blame China for a lack of data security, but rather allow Big Tech lobbyists to block any federal attempts at regulatory oversight of social media. Without a federal ban on TikTok throughout the United States (which remains staunchly unlikely), it is impossible to put the app back in the proverbial Pandora’s box. These TikTok bans will hurt the education of good media citizens in college classrooms.

Can the ByteDance App Be Taken Off the U.S. to Protect Us? An Empirical Comment on China’s First Amendment Rights and Privacy Practices

“While ByteDance claims that it maintains its operations in the United States separately, there is no easy way to determine the extent to which that claim is true,” said Sameer Patil, a professor at the University of Utah who studies user privacy online.

He said that while social media companies are harvesting all kinds of data about users, it’s often overblown to what extent they “know” about users.

The US will retain ultimate approval authority over such a sale even though Beijing won’t have a say in it.

There is a chance that the committee is happy with the steps TikTok has taken to make sure there’s a difference in the data between US and Chinese users.

CFIUS deliberations are famously secretive and happen behind closed doors. It is not clear when the committee might finish its investigation, nor is it known which way it is leaning.

The president of the Canadian Treasury Board said that the federal government will prevent the app from being downloaded on official devices in the future.

Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country. However, it is possible. You don’t have to take my word for it. We have worked with both the U.S. government and Oracle to design robust solutions to address the concerns about TikTok’s heritage.

When it comes to its own citizens, China has prohibited everything from Google to Twitter to this newspaper. America wins when it can show the world that it is a free and democratic country. Not surprisingly, banning TikTok on the grounds that it’s a threat to our security won’t be seen by other nations as much different from the People’s Republic of China’s actions to protect itself. It’s also not certain that the federal government can, under the First Amendment, simply prohibit access to a significant communications platform or that it can control online content so as to preclude disinformation. The political question of whether the American fans of TikTok will allow it to be taken away from them is a serious one.

“It certainly makes sense, then, for U.S. soldiers to be told, ‘Hey, don’t use the app because it might share your location information with other entities,” said Chander. That’s also true of the weather app and many other apps in your phone, whether they are owned by China or not.

A ban of TikTok throughout the United States, if it could actually be enacted, would immediately solve our national security concerns about the wildly popular Chinese-owned video app. Such a ban could endanger our national security. It would leave behind a bigger issue, which is that our nation hasn’t addressed concerns over the large amount of personal data collected in our digital lives, which can be used by enemies.

“Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S. Warner said in a statement that before TikTok, it was HUAWEI and ZTE who threatened the nation’s telecommunications networks. “We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America, so we aren’t playing Whac-A-Mole and scrambling to catch up once they’re already ubiquitous.”

It is easy to say that a foreign government is a threat and protect yourself from that foreign government, he says. “And I think we should be a little cautious about how that can be politicized in a way that far exceeds the actual threat in order to achieve political ends.”

U.S. Privacy and Commercial Lobbying: The Case for TikTok and a “Fast” Antitrust Law

Even if the ban on TikTok were to move forward, it would be questionable if it would gain any political traction, and even if it did, it would raise First Amendment concerns. Calo thinks the discussion could push policy in the right direction.

“I think that we’re right in the United States to be finally thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial surveillance taking place of U.S. citizens and residents,” he said. We should do something to address it, but not with this ad hoc posturing, but by passing privacy rules or laws, which is something the Federal Trade Commission seems very interested in doing.

Congress can’t help but draw attention to its lack of progress on regulating American tech giants, despite many reports, hearings and proposed legislation.

The stark difference between the two illustrates how simple narratives, well-funded lobbying and genuinely thorny policy questions can make or break a bill. It also hints at how a select few Big Tech companies continue to maintain their dominance in the market and their centrality in the lives of countless US households.

US officials have raised concerns that China could use its laws to pressure TikTok or ByteDance to hand over US user data that could be used for intelligence or disinformation purposes.

“We think a lot of the concerns are maybe overblown,” Beckerman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, “but we do think these problems can be solved” through the ongoing government negotiations.

In 2019, ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on lobbying, according to public records gathered by the transparency group OpenSecrets. The company spent more than half a million dollars on lobbying by the end of last year.

Last year, Meta spent upwards of $20 million on internet industry lobbying. Next was Amazon at $19 million, then Google at almost $10 million. Almost 10 times what was spent by TikTok’s parent was spent on lobbying, making them number four on the list.

Supporters of AICOA wanted Schumer to bring the legislation to a floor vote, but he didn’t. The bill never got a floor time its supporters wanted because of intense tech lobbying and doubts about whether the bill had the votes. One of the tech-focused antitrust bills would have forced Apple to allow users to download applications from websites other than its own app store.

For a brief moment this month, lawmakers seemed poised to pass a bill that could force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. Meta warned that it would have to stop displaying news content on its platforms if the bill passed.

Do We Really Need to Disturb Tech Crowds? How Should Tech Professors Learn to Stop Taking Down Hateful Content?

Time and again, Silicon Valley’s biggest players have maneuvered expertly in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers keen to knock them down a peg.

By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Section 230 is used by social media companies to leave out hate speech, but Democrats say it should be changed to make it harder for platforms to take down offensive content.

The cross-cutting politics and the technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology, not to mention the potential consequences for the economy of screwing it up, have combined to make it genuinely difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

“It’s really important to establishing a Republican brand. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.

Research and teaching about social media have become more and more common. The app has changed the way modern communication is done.

How should media and communications professors teach students to be savvy consumers and content creators if they can’t teach a pillar of the modern media landscape? While students can certainly still access TikTok within the privacy of their own homes, professors can no longer put TikToks into PowerPoint slides or show TikTok links via classroom web browser. Companies, brands, and novel forms of Storytelling all rely on TikTok, and professors will not be able to train their students in best practices for these purposes. Students are able to see the things they are learning in real time when they use TikTok.

As states implement their bans, they leave their citizens disadvantaged in a fast- paced media world. Students in the states will have a disadvantage in applying for jobs, as their peers from other states will be able to get education and training, while media and communications students in the states are at a disadvantage because of their lack of experience.

Professors also must do research. Social media scholars in these states quite literally cannot do what they have been hired to do and be experts in if these bans persist. While university compliance offices have said the bans may only be on campus Wi-Fi and mobile data is still allowed, who will foot that bill for one to pay for a more expensive data plan on their phone? No one is the answer. Even though working at home is still an option, professors are expected to be on the job regularly if they are to be believed. This means any social media professor attempting to research TikTok on campus will have to rely on video streaming via mobile data, which can be quite expensive, either through having to individually pay for unlimited data, or accidentally going over one’s limits.

The CEO of TikTok is going to appear before a group of US lawmakers who want the app banned due to national security concerns. The clamor for a sale is getting louder.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was reportedly considering offering a bill to ban a broader “category of applications” that could be applied to other apps that pose security risks, according to Axios.

The app, owned by ByteDance, Inc., has been under fire since the Trump administration, when the former president signed an executive order to enforce a nationwide ban of the app, but ByteDance sued and it never went through.

According to guidance issued Monday by the Office of Management and Budget, all executive agencies and those they contract with, must remove any applications from TikTok or its parent company, Byte Dance, within 30 days of the notice. Within 90 days, the agencies must include in contracts that the short-form video app cannot be used on devices and that they must not use the app at all.

The CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a research and advisory firm that was among the researchers invited to be briefed on “Project Texas”, said that there was life or death at stake for TikTok. They are throwing everything they can at the problem.

Responding to Monday’s hearing announcement, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter welcomed “the opportunity to set the record straight.” TikTok will present its plan to protect US user safety during the March 23rd hearing, Oberwetter said.

The Chinese Charm of America: Why President Donald Trump Shouldn’t Give Up on the China-Asia Charm Offensive and Why China Should Not Give Up

Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China. Much of Cook’s success at Apple can be attributed to his ability to maintain working relationships with the Chinese government and manufacturers.

Some say that Washington should take action. “We will see limitations this year,” says Mira Ricardel, a former White House deputy national security adviser now at the Chertoff Group advising businesses on regulations. There’s a consensus of view that’s going to lead to something. Here is what it might look like.

India has a blockade called TikTok. NetBlocks says that a few small ISPs allow access. Ram’s app was downloaded in the US and during his visit to India he was able to watch videos using it. But the ban has forced many Indian users to turn toward rival services, including from Google and Facebook, and has caused turmoil for influencers who built businesses on TikTok.

It would have barred cloud providers and internet infrastructure services from doing business with the company if Trump had ordered that immediately. The people or companies caught dodging the order would have faced fines or prison sentences. “We wanted to start at the root, where it comes into the US, and extract it that way,” says Ivan Kanapathy, who was China director for Trump’s National Security Council and is now vice president at policy consultancy Beacon Global Strategies.

The company recently launched a full-fledged charm offensive that has included rapid-fire meetings in Washington with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, new transparency tools on the app and a first-ever tour to members of the media of its corporate campus in the Los Angeles area.

Adam Segal is a Chinese technology policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s a desire to show strength to China,” he said.

“But there’s also a lot of pent-up animosity toward social media broadly and its affect on children, U.S. democracy and misinformation, and it’s easier to take it out on Chinese-owned TikTok right now than it is, say, Facebook or Twitter,” Segal added.

The source code of TikTok’s platform will be reviewed by engineers from Oracle, who will have the ability to see how TikTok’s video quality is affected. If the thirdparty monitor misses anything they will inspect TikTok’s data.

TikTok said on Tuesday that 2500 people are expected to be hired by theUSDS who have undergone high-level background checks like the U.S. government. None of them would be Chinese.

Aggregate data can be analyzed by corporate employees in Beijing if they have the necessary permission from the U.S. data security team.

What will the TikTok Data Security Plan say about the US-Oracle Security Plan?” “It’s not going to work,” said Lewis

The plan addresses many of the major security concerns U.S. officials have, said Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but that is no guarantee it will be approved.

“The Oracle plan would work,” Lewis said. “This kind of thing is pretty standard. A reasonable solution may not suffice, as TikTok has become so emotional.

After a two-year national security review, the White House has told TikTok to either sell ByteDance or face a serious punishment in the US, including a possible ban.

Segal agreed that the deal resolves most of the data security concerns by allowing inspections and transferring user data from the US to Oracle.

The company gave an official introduction to the project on Tuesday for the first time, as details of the plan have been published in a variety of newspapers.

Journalists were led through the TikTok’s Transparency and Accountability center, which felt more like an interactive public relations museum.

Then there was a game of sorts that put people in the position of a TikTok content moderator, where they decided if a video violated TikTok’s rules or not.

The facilities will also feature server rooms where visitors who sign non-disclosure agreements can review TikTok’s entire source code, though journalists are not given an opportunity to do this.

Do we care about the privacy of our country? Rep. Marco Rubio’s plan for an air-space balloon campaign using the Content Moderation Game

The content moderation game brought home the perils of moderation for thousands of people, but it was not the crux of the problem.

“We hope that by sharing details of our comprehensive plans with the full Committee, Congress can take a more deliberative approach to the issues at hand,” the TikTok spokesperson added.

“If you’re certainly willing to fly a balloon over your continental airspace—and have people see it with a naked eye—what would make you not weaponize data? Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, wants to use an app on the phone of 60 million Americans to influence political debate in this country.

Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota says that because they are trying to gather as much data as they can about all aspects of our country, even the smallest items can add up to give them more data. There is a huge amount of data that will never be used, but it is the small pieces that add up. They are working on it. They are patient. They clearly see that we’re threatening, and they’re collecting data.

The efforts suggested were not relevant to Senator Michael Bennet’s concerns.

Can You Play TikTok Like A Balloon in Your Phone? A Case Study in the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee

Canada has banned all government-issued mobile phones from being used with the Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok.

Last week, Canada’s federal privacy watchdog and its provincial counterparts in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec announced an investigation to delve into whether the app complies with Canadian privacy legislation.

Recent media reports have also raised concerns about potential Chinese interference in recent Canadian elections, prompting opposition parties to call for a public inquiry into alleged foreign election interference.

Gen. Paul Nakasone explained in testimony before the Senate armed services committee that you can turn off the message when you have a large audience of Listeners.

“Our status has been debated in public in a way that is divorced from the facts of that agreement and what we’ve achieved already. We will continue to assist in the delivery of a comprehensive national security plan for the American people.

The Commerce Department will have the authority to put in placemitigation measures if a bipartisan Senate bill is unveiled on Tuesday.

Like the US government push to ban hardware and other gear made by Huawei, another Chinese technology giant, US officials are often short on specifics when asked to show public proof of collusion between the Chinese government and ByteDance.

The Director of the National Security Agency’s Cybersecurity said in December that people are always looking for the smoking gun in new technologies. “I characterize it much more as a loaded gun.”

McCaul and other Republicans have called TikTok a balloon in your phone and a drug.

CNN Primetime: Is time up for TikTok?” is Shou Chew trying to save the company from a public outburst

The United States and China have had disagreements in the past, as federal officers worry about China’s technological prowess. Washington also is watching China conduct military displays in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, not to mention China’s surveillance balloon traversing across the U.S.

As a growing number of lawmakers raise national security concerns about TikTok’s ties to China, and some experts worry about the app’s impact on young people’s mental health, CNN is hosting a special to dig into these issues. Watch “CNN Primetime: Is time up for TikTok?” Thursday, March 23 at 9 pm.

At a Harvard Business Review conference earlier this month, where executives, professors and artists appeared for talks on corporate leadership and emotional intelligence, Shou Chew attempted to save his company.

Chew’s heightened visibility appears to be part of a larger messaging campaign by TikTok to bolster its reputation in the US and remind voters – and their representatives – how essential the social network is to American culture.

A press conference is planned for Wednesday with dozens of social media creators on the steps of the Capitol, some of whom have been flown out there by TikTok. The company is paying for a blitz of advertisements for a Beltway audience. The docu series highlighted American small businesses who depend on the platform for their livelihoods.

Behind the scenes, Chew has also met with members of Congress and TikTok recently invited researchers and academics to its Washington, D.C., offices to learn more about how it is working to address lawmakers concerns over its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. Its parent company has also ramped up federal lobbying, spending more than $5 million last year, according to data tracked by OpenSecrets.

In one of the most aggressive moves yet by a social media company, TikTok recently set a default one hour daily screen time limit on all accounts for users under the age of 18. It rolled out a feature that aimed to offer more information to users about why its powerful algorithm recommends certain videos. The company has pledged to give more transparency to researchers.

The series spotlighted inspiring stories of Americans who run businesses. The first of the 60-second clips features a Mississippi soap maker with a deep Southern accent who built her company on the app, and the second features an educator who quit his job to focus on sharing informational videos on TikTok aimed at teaching toddlers how to read.

The list of expected attendees includes a disabled Asian American creator using her platform to combat ableism, a small business owner from South Carolina who launched a greeting card company via TikTok, and an Ohio-based chef who built her bakery business via the app. Some of the creators have a large following on the TikTok.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/tech/tiktok-messaging-campaign/index.html

Do emerging technologies matter in PR? Commentary on TikTok, China’s digital censorship, and the ByteDance app

Sherman is a little bit skeptical about how effective the PR push will be, due to how divided Washington is right now.

Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund and a former Biden administration adviser, said that by and large, TikTok’s lobbying efforts had been pretty ineffective.

“It’s gotten a lot more attention, so there’s just more awareness of the problem,” says Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on the new House Select Committee on China.

Starting in March 2022, an unprecedented regulation came into effect requiring internet companies to register recommendation algorithms with the Cyberspace Administration, the powerful internet regulator that reports to President Xi Jinping.

“It also seems extremely unlikely that Beijing will accept any deal that removes TikTok’s algorithm[s] from its direct control and regulatory authority,” he said.

TikTok’s algorithms, which keep users glued to the app, are believed to be key to its success. The algorithms give recommendations based on users’ behavior, thus pushing videos they actually like and want to watch.

ByteDance would need a license from Beijing to sell its technology because of the updated rules, according to a commentary by a professor of trade at the University of International Business and Economics.

It’s necessary to include cutting-edge technologies in export control management, according to Cui Fan.

ByteDance 2021 acquisition, Chinese regulator, and the data security of online news aggregation and ChatgGamma

A senior official from the Chinese media regulators visited Bytedance last week. He urged the company to improve the use of “recommendation algorithms” to spread “positive energy” and strengthen the review of online content, according to a statement from the regulator posted on its website.

A golden share of 1% was acquired by a Chinese government entity in a Beijing subsidiary of ByteDance in April 2021. The subsidiary controls operating licenses for Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China, and Toutiao, a news aggregation app.

Rules governing deep synthesis took effect in the beginning of 2020. They will restrict the use of AI-powered image, audio and text-generation software. Such technologies underpin popular apps such as ChatGPT.

“A change of TikTok’s ownership solves nothing,” he said. “The real issue is general data security and who ultimately has access to that data, by whatever means, regardless of legal ownership.”

He said that the test is whether user data can be effectively ring-fenced and if privacy and security can be achieved through data segregation and other means.

As for a solution, Silvers expects both sides to try to “finesse a compromise” where US concerns are addressed, but Beijing still retains control over TikTok.

The Rise and Fall of the TikTok Concept in the U.S. Culture: The Case of Trader Joe’s and Barnes & Noble

U.S. culture has fully been penetrated by TikTok. Trader Joe’s has a section that promotes foods that are popular on TikTok. Or, for example, Barnes & Noble stores, with tables dedicated to #BookTok. TikTok is the most influential in the music industry due to the fact that its songs make commercial success and land at the top of the charts.