The clock is ticking

In the 18th Century, Europe's imperial powers had a problem. Chinese goods, especially porcelainShiny ceramic pottery. and silk, were the finest in the world. That meant China had a huge trade surplusA situation in which a country sells or exports more to other countries than it purchases or imports from them. It also signifies a country's economic potential. with Europe, which was costing them a lot of money.

Then the British hit upon an answer. They forced their Indian colonies to start growing tonnes of opiumAn addictive drug made from the juice of the opium poppy. , a powerful drug, and then shipped this to China.

The effects on Chinese society were catastrophic. Opium is highly addictive, and thousands of people got hooked. The state tried to ban the drug, but British merchants just turned to the black market. Finally, Britain went to war with China and forced it to legalise the opium trade.

Two hundred years later, it is a product of Chinese origin that is sparking fears in the West. Opium is addictive because it releases chemicals in the brain that make us feel happy, and we become dependent on this feeling. TikTok, and other social media platforms, experts say, work the same way.

Western governments are keen to curtail its reach. Several governments, including Canada, India, the EU and the UK, have already banned the app from official mobile phones. Now US president Joe Biden is threatening to ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese owner sells its stake in the app.

Why this sudden panic? In part, it is over fears that TikTok is sharing the data it harvests with the Chinese government. The app casts a wide net: TikTok can siphon off your data even if you have never used the app.

It does this by using trackers called pixels, which infest every corner of the internet. They harvest your data independently of the websites they are on, so they can take your information even if you reject cookies.

This is not unusual: most Big Tech companies harvest data in the same way. The difference is that TikTok is linked with a foreign government.

Technically, TikTok is an entirely separate entity from its more tightly controlled Chinese counterpart, Douyin. But its headquarters are still in Beijing, and few people believe it has any real independence from the Chinese state.

So there are worries that TikTok could steal sensitive government data and feed it back to China.

Some critics even fear that China could use TikTok to spy on users, spread misinformation and propagandaInformation, which may be biased or misleading, used to promote a certain viewpoint. and undermine elections. 

But experts think this is unlikely. There have been a few cases in which TikTok has suspended users who have criticised the Chinese government, but the company has always backed down.

They say it might not be possible to ban TikTok now. It is one of the most popular apps in the world. It has been downloaded more than 3.5 billion times, 130 million of those in the US. Around 41% of Americans are thought to use it - including 70% of 18- and 19-year-olds.¹

For many of these people, TikTok is an essential source of news, information and entertainment. They are unlikely to respond well to a ban. And some have said that if TikTok is banned in the USA, they will simply get a VPNVirtual Private Network. It allows people to hide their identity online by masking their device's IP address. People can use VPNs to "relocate" themselves and browse the internet from any country. to access it anyway.

Yes: There is no reason to believe that TikTok is more dangerous than any other tech firm. A ban would be ineffective, because people will simply ignore it, and will increase tensions between the US and China. 

No: We still have no idea what the capabilities of TikTok are. It could be used for spying, propaganda, or misinformation. Right now it is like a timebomb at the very heart of our society.

Or... We should be worried about TikTok, but only for the same reasons we worry about other social media apps: it is addictive, harmful for its users, and hungry for our data.