A little history lesson, courtesy of Wiki:
TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy and talent videos.[5] ByteDance first launched Douyin for the Chinese market in September 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of China; however, it only became available worldwide, including the United States, after merging with Musically on August 2, 2018. TikTok and Douyin are similar to each other, but run on separate servers and have different content to comply with Chinese censorship restrictions. The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds,……
As recently as last week, the President indicated he was prepared to sign an Executive Order banning the use of TikTok. Many have sighted concerns with U.S. lawmakers relevant to intelligence and privacy concerns about TikTok’s ownership. The company has denied allegations that it shares user data with the Chinese government.
Also, Microsoft who had previously expressed an interest in acquiring the US holdings, now appears to have changed their mind. One can only speculate as to why.
See Also: Welcome to Saturday Conversation
TikTok, however, appears to be just as determined to remain and expand within the US market. Yet one only needs to look at the recent events surrounding the Trump rally in Tulsa, OK to recognize the potential influence and interference to the election. TikTok users were encouraged to reserve a booking and then not attend. Once again, we saw AOC especially pleased with the empty seats.
Do we really need the potential of more intelligence theft or election interference?