The US Senate recently passed a bill giving short video app TikTok a nine-month deadline to sell its US operations to a US company or face a nationwide ban. Reason: Chinese parent company ByteDance is said to be under the influence of the Chinese government, which allows it to pass sensitive data on American citizens to the Beijing regime.
Although Bytedance denied the allegations, the bill was approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
His TikTok discussion in Europe focuses on a different aspect. EU authorities claim the app poses a high risk of addiction, especially for young users, and can also cause other forms of psychological harm. In response, the company has discontinued a reward feature in the EU that was part of its spin-off app TikTok Lite, which gave gift certificates for real products for watching videos.
Countries that have shut down or banned TikTok
China’s neighbor India was one of the first countries to introduce restrictions on TikTok and other Chinese apps. India has banned about 60 Chinese apps, including TikTok, amid military clashes along its shared Himalayan border with China. A permanent ban has been in place since 2020, citing data security for the public.
In contrast, it was moral concerns that led him to ban the app in Afghanistan in 2022, about a year after the Taliban took back control of the country. This app is also not available for Iranian users. In Iran, TikTok is said to have blocked Iranian IP addresses. However, the totalitarian regime in Tehran has blocked almost all major social media platforms, including YouTube, X, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram.
The TikTok app has also been banned by the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Nepal, and Somalia for similar reasons.
Countries with Partial Bans on TikTok
Nearly all governments that have imposed restrictions on TikTok have placed restrictions on TikTok for reasons such as causing moral and psychological harm, misuse of data, suspected misinformation, “enemy propaganda,” etc. He said he did this to protect the public from the negative effects of the virus.
Therefore, the app was not completely banned in all cases. Pakistan, for example, temporarily blocked TikTok several times due to inappropriate content.
In most cases, the app is available again after the company adjusts its filters to block the offending content.
In Russia, for example, this content includes anything that depicts the country’s invasion of Ukraine in a different light than the Kremlin’s official narrative. Also, the app is blocked on foreign devices in China, so you can only use the Chinese version.
Other countries have also temporarily blocked TikTok, including Azerbaijan in 2020 when the conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh escalated, and Senegal in 2023 after the arrest of then-opposition politician Ousmane Sonko.
Countries with TikTok Restrictions for Government Officials
There are currently 16 countries, most of them in Europe, that prohibit the installation or use of TikTok on mobile phones for government work.
The scope of the prohibition varies widely. Starting in early 2023, government employees will be prohibited from installing apps on work devices in the United States and Canada, and most U.S. states have adopted similar rules.
In March 2023, a series of orders were issued by governments, including those in Australia and New Zealand, requiring employees to remove apps from their work phones. Similar things happened in England, the Netherlands, and Norway. In Denmark, the TikTok ban only applies to employees of the Ministry of Defense, while in Latvia it also applies to employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
TikTok in Germany
In Germany, parties in the current ruling coalition (the Greens, the center-left Social Democrats, and the neoliberal Free Democrats) are currently regulating TikTok or banning it from federal employees’ devices. The conservative Christian Democratic Party opposition party even called for a complete ban.
However, there are currently no restrictions on TikTok in Germany. The right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany has been particularly successful in appealing to young voters with the app.