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This week, Bloomberg reported that members of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign were instructed to delete the social media app TikTok from their phones. The wildly popular video app has now been the subject of bipartisan censure. On July 6, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the administration was looking at an outright ban of the app, and days later White House adviser Peter Navarro said the Trump administration will take “strong action” against it and WeChat for “engaging in information warfare against the US.”
As analysts have pointed out, “banning” TokTok lies beyond the realm of possibility for the current US government, but the sabre-rattling against the soft power of software accountable to the Chinese government is likely to get louder.
The growth of the Chinese tech sector, and its reach and influence in the US, will be key talking points for Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg when he appears (virtually) in Congressional hearings tomorrow to defend the size and power of large American technology companies.
The rise of TikTok has also recently kicked off a debate among journalists and publishers about the safety and ethics of using and promoting the platform without giving adequate weight to the myriad of ways it might ultimately be compromised.
Although more heinous data breaches have occurred recently at Twitter, and the consensus is that Facebook is at least as leaky with personal data, TikTok’s status as a Chinese-owned company puts use of the app—and attendant risks and ethical concerns—in a
Read more here: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/the-modern-dilemma-of-tiktok-journalism.php