The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would give the Chinese-owned company ByteDance about 6 months to divest from the popular music app TikTok, or risk facing a total ban from the United States. But they have to get through a worthy adversary first – Generation Z.
Citing concerns about security and privacy over the Chinese government having access to data over Americans, the United States is looking to make sure we get rid of Griddy for good.
Although the bill seems to have widespread support, it does raise several interesting questions.
From a business perspective – should we allow the Chinese Government to sell an app that collects our data when we aren’t allowed to sell Meta, Twitter(X), and other social networks over there? It’s not fair trade if we aren’t able to equally affect them with our bad taste in music as well.
From a constitutional perspective – does banning TikTok restrict the freedom of speech/expression of Generation Z which wants to geek out on
From a fairness perspective – are other United States technology companies facing the same level of scrutiny when it comes to privacy and security, or are we singling out the Chinese here? I don’t see us going after the Smurfs and their revolutionary technology.
I’ll have more to say about this later, but food for thought for now.