Back in 2020 when the pandemic was entering almost every household in India and we had just gotten comfortable with watching TikTok the entire day, the government announced a ban on the app in India.
The ban still hasn’t been revoked and the TikTok platform continues to battle just to enter India once again.
While that is happening, it’s safe to say that by now, TikTok has been pretty actively used in places like China and America.
And that’s where we originate the contrast from – China and America.
Let’s talk about America.
See ByteDance, a Chinese IT company, owns TikTok. The American version of TikTok right now is supposed and claimed to be a separate entity from ByteDance.
But that’s not the case.
The employees working at TikTok USA receive official email IDs for both TikTok as well as ByteDance. While the data for the US users is being stored in the Oracle servers in Texas, it is also being stored in Virginia which is easily accessible by ByteDance employees all the way from Beijing.
So why is this concerning?
See data farming is one of the most feared concepts in the world right now. With a person’s data and what’s on their phone, you can exploit it in any way possible. Even though nobody publicly claims to do it, there are always instances when your and our data is being farmed.
And infamously, TikTok is notorious in this regard.
TikTok is so intrusive that it even monitors your keystrokes, which means it can read your data even before you enter your browser.
And the worst part is that data farming isn’t all that TikTok does.
Because of its biased algorithm, TikTok promotes such content to the American audience which is mentally deteriorating and destructive.
It has a negative impact overall on the people.
The content is filled with dance videos and content not suitable for adolescents and children is being promoted.
However, in countries like China, the content is very motivational and creative; viewers can see DIY projects, content about building and constructing, and educational content overall.
How this affects our society is that where in America people are trying to be influencers, people in China and other countries are aiming to become scientists and researchers.
Practical after all, right?
