Wisconsin governor bans TikTok from state devices on security concerns
These heavy handed approaches in the last couple of years makes me wonder what the NSA found out about TikTok. Two consecutive presidents, that held relatively different positions on foreign policy, and government officials at various levels are all pushing to expand this ban. The public sentiment does not agree at all with these bans.<p>I know that TikTok isn&#x27;t strictly popular here on Hacker News or on Reddit, but the product is not appreciably different than Vine. The general public loves using TikTok, and this can be see from how it genuinely competes with Youtube in terms of user engagement.<p>On the other hand, the app hasn&#x27;t been banned on consumer devices like it was in India. If the national security risk was genuine, I can&#x27;t imagine the government would be this slow to act. Indian banned the App back in 2020. Some universities have also banned TikTok on their wifi networks.<p>I personally don&#x27;t agree with the bans without public evidence of a cybersecruity threat. A company hoarding user data that users are willingly supplying doesn&#x27;t become a cybersecurity risk just because that company is Chinese. The age group that is currently in college are the biggest users and creators of TikTok, they will use a VPN or switch to data to consume content. Until evidence is transparently release, showing nonconsensual data&#x2F;OSINT gather, this feels like a political play. Especially since similar data gathering companies are not just allowed to exist, but employed by the US government for their intelligence gathering. Palantir is continuing work with the US government to create a surveillance state, more than what they did to help arrest and deport immigrants crossing the border.<p>I hope we see some information showing concrete secruity threats from TikTok.