TikTok ban could spread to the UK and other countries warn experts
It's a rough time to be a TikTok creator.
While you can still make your money on the platform thanks to a last-minute extension to its potential sale and the short-form video app only going dark for 12 hours, its future remains unclear.
Big names including Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson and even Elon Musk are circling a hopeful purchase of TikTok's US operations from the Chinese-owned ByteDance, but no deals have been made...yet.
The US government shared concerns that China could be accessing our data, and while ByteDance told the Supreme Court a TikTok ban could be in violation of the First Amendment, these pleas fell on deaf ears.
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One of President Donald Trump's many first-day executive orders involved extending the potential purchase period for up to 90 days - although TikTok currently isn't available to download on any app stores.
While Trump has vowed to #saveTikTok, experts warn that the ban could soon spread to other territories including the United Kingdom. Speaking to the BBC, Emily Taylor, Editor of the Cyber Policy Journal, said it might only be a matter of time until other major powers follow suit.
Discussing TikTok's immediate future, Taylor explained: "There are big parallels between TikTok and what happened with China's Huawei and Russia's Kaspersky that indicates it's just a matter of time until a creeping ban takes effect."
The site reminds us how Kaspersky's antivirus software was banned from civil and military computers during Trump's first term. As the BBC notes, the UK and other allies soon followed suit.
Even though it took years to see the ban go through, Kaspersky closed its US and UK offices, saying there was no business there.
It was a similar situation for the Chinese-based Huawei over fears that 5G telecoms could be used to spy on us.
As for what this means for TikTok, the so-called Five Eyes Alliance is key. The Five Eyes Alliance is a 'close-knit intelligence sharing arrangement' between the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. All of these have banned TikTok on government devices, while Canada demanded operations cease in the country due to national security concerns.
The Five Eyes Alliance has even more power than this, with the TikTok ban on government devices already spreading to Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, The Netherlands, Norway, and Taiwan.
Ciaran Martin was the head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre during the Huawei and Kaspersky bans, but even he's not sure what will happen with TikTok: "What we don't yet know is whether TikTok will be the exception as Trump has said he is opposed to the ban so will he order allies to replicate a ban? We don't yet know."
For now, a government spokesperson reiterated there are no current plans for a TikTok ban in the UK: “We engage with all major social media companies to understand their plans for ensuring the security of UK data and to ensure they meet the high data protection and cyber security standards we expect."
Even if the United Kingdom can wait it out, there are fears about whether TikTok can survive without its 170 million monthly US users and the hits it would take on spending in terms of advertisers and the TikTok Shop.
TikTok looks safe for now, but with it sometimes being a case of America saying jump and the rest of the world asking how high, the shadow of a TikTok ban is still looming large over us all.