"Tik Tok" has reached a billion.. but the situation does not bode well

 Within a few years, the short video application "TikTok" skyrocketed, reaching about a billion users within 5 years of its launch, but all this success is threatened. And the British newspaper “The Guardian” stated, on Friday, that “TikTok” has become at the heart of youth culture, as it is a popular destination for about a billion users around the world.

She described it as the "Generation Z" application, that is, the generation that was born since 2000, due to its advantages such as dancing and entertainment videos, and others. TikTok announced in September 2021 that the number of its users had reached one billion users per month.

Although estimates showed that the number decreased by the beginning of 2023 to about 834 million, it remains one of the largest and most growing social platforms on the Internet. About two weeks ago, the app's CEO, Xu Ziqiu, said it had more than 150 million active users in the United States alone.

However, this figure was not mentioned in a festive atmosphere, but in light of an interpellation session in the US Congress, in which members of the Energy and Commerce Committee attacked Shaw harshly. They summoned the CEO of “TikTok” to testify about the security of user data in the application, after concerns about it.

This comes within a broader framework that puts the short video platform under Western pressure, as the Chinese company that owns ByteDance has become virtually without friends there. And “Tik Tok” is located in the middle of a geopolitical confrontation between the rise of China as an international power and the lack of confidence in it on the part of Western countries. Tens of millions of its users use the application to watch and exchange short videos, according to the “Guardian”.

 What is the cause of concern of the US administration?

• The governments of several countries, including the United States, are concerned that ByteDance could give browsing history or other data related to users to the Chinese government, or promote propaganda and misleading information.
• TikTok is one of the causes of conflicts between China and other governments over technology and security.

List of countries and institutions that have banned "Tik Tok"

Many Western countries and institutions have banned their employees from using the application on work phones for security reasons, and countries in other regions of the world have also banned it.

• France has banned the app on work phones for civil servants.
• New Zealand has banned TikTok on devices linked to Parliament, citing security concerns.
• Belgium has banned the app from work phones of the federal government.
• The order also included: employees of the US government, the European Commission, NATO and others.
• India and Jordan have banned the app.