With TikTok’s future on the line, The Verge wrote a great article about politicians voting to shut TikTok down, but still using the platform to campaign in the mean time.
The bill to ban TikTok recently was passed by the house for the second time. Politicians have a problem with TikTok because it is a Chinese owned company. They fear American data can be in danger when stored on Chinese soil. TikToks parent company has made it clear it does not store data in China.
TikTok is not the first Chinese owned cpmpay used by Americans. Also, Americans have had their data sold by a ton of American companies and it has never been this big of a discussion among politicians, so what is the real issue?
Politicans know TikTok is where a huge part of their target audience “lives” and gets their information and influence from. While they say they will live by the rules IF it gets banned, they can’t afford to give up campaigning on the platfrom right now.
If you have voted to ban the app, I think you shouldn’t be using it.
The Verge article makes the argument that there is a partisan divide on what canditates have to gain from the app. With TikToks user base being young people, and young Americans tend to be more Liberal, the Democratic party has more to lose when banning TikTok. Republicians are still able to reach their audience through other apps like FaceBook.
Author Lauren Feiner closed the article with a great point from Bradley Tusk, “The upside of the fact opinions of Congress and Washingtion are so low is that no one expects them to be anything other than hypocrites.” I couldn’t agree more.
I agree with you that if a politician is taking a stance against TikTok, they shouldn't be using the platform to campaign. It's very hypocritical for someone to be in favor of banning an app for "security reasons" when they themselves still use the app. I understand the appeal for politicians to utilize TikTok as many young people "live" on the platform as you said, but there are other "safer" platforms for politicians to use that wouldn't make them look like a massive hypocrite. I think you also make a great point by highlighting the hypocrisy of politicians claiming that a Chinese owned app is unsafe when many American owned companies have been found to sell our data. Great post.
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