Tech Desk 
Jul 28, 2024
The longstanding controversy revolving around the TikTok ban in the US appears nowhere close to settling as a recent report pointed towards the platform taking users' opinions on all sorts of topics ranging from abortion, gun control and everything in between.
PC Mag, citing a Wall Street Journal report, further highlighted that the short video-sharing platform shares the data with the parent company ByteDance.
The details were publicly disclosed by the Justice Department as a result of an inevitable protocol of giving insights into the information collection problem.
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The revelation of these claims stemmed from a lawsuit lodged to ban TikTok in the US, with a waiver relying on the condition of it divesting from ByteDance by January. What fans the issue is that the transmission of user data with a Chinese entity makes the national security of the US more vulnerable.
TikTok, however, resorted to calling it the contravention of freedom of speech given to Americans.
“The collection of data from Americans is not a protected activity,” stated the Justice Department, while adding that TikTok has long been gatekeeping its content upon ByteDance's instructions, making it a “conduit for content-moderation decisions made by the Chinese entities.”
In a statement released in April to tackle the US government's claims, TikTok said it has "invested billions of dollars to keep US data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation."
