WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — On Friday, the United States Supreme Court finished debates on whether or not to uphold the incoming ban on a popular social media platform.
The debate was over the constitutionality of a law passed in April. It gives TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance until Jan. 19 to sell the popular app or risk a nationwide ban.
It’s a topic that President Biden and President-elect Trump have both commented on.
In the more than two hours of oral arguments, a majority of the court seemed to lean toward upholding the ban. The main concern? Chinese influence over the popular app and the possibility of it being used for espionage, data mining and more.
So to get to the bottom of how serious the danger is, WPTV reporter Michael Hoffman brought questions to the experts to find some answers.
Some people are active users of Tik Tok.
“I use it more than I like, probably once a day,” said Alexandra Diaz. “I actually found [my job] from TikTok.”
Others are not.
“I think we have more interesting things in the world,” said Anna Belova.
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TikTok is used by roughly 170 million Americans and according to Gallup, it’s used for an average 1.5 hours a day. That’s just under 22 full days days a year. That means a lot of data being collected, which is the exact issue the Supreme Court debated on Friday.
“ByteDance, which is a Chinese-based company, has full access to all the data. So how do they harvest that data? What do they use it for?” asked Mehran Basiratmand, cybersecurity expert and professor at FAU.
“So there's some serious merit to the arguments being made in the Supreme Court today, that there is a serious national security risk with this app?” asked reporter Michael Hoffman.
“Absolutely,” responded Basiratmand.
Basiratmand says on top of that, TikTok’s proprietary algorithm is much more advanced than other similar apps in the way that it targets you with data collected from you, making it more dangerous and effective.
“They could sway people into specific area,” said Basiratmand. “They could actually reinforce values. They could distribute misinformation. There's a lot of those that goes on. It's an exceptionally powerful tool, because they reach deep inside any, any, every individual, and they find basically their strength and weaknesses.”
So, why doesn’t ByteDance just sell the app? Well, one reason is that algorithm.
“The inherent special sauce for TikTok is this algorithm,” said social media expert Ashleigh Shay. “Which ByteDance has gone on record saying they will not sell even if they sell TikTok as a company. The [Chinese government] has no interest in selling that piece of technology because it is technically property of China.”
So, if the ban goes forward, what happens to TikTok? Shay says changes would come, just slowly.
“It will disappear from the Play stores, Android, iTunes, etc,” said Shay. “The app will continue to live on your phone, as I understand it, but you won't be able to update it, eventually rendering it useless.”
