By Athena Papakosta

Or to put it another way. Is there really a threat from TikTok?

The West decided to start doing… block it TikTokthe most popular Chinese entertainment app for mobile phones, which gives its users the opportunity to create, edit and eventually publish and share – soon to be – videos, online.

Last Monday, Washington ordered all federal employees to delete the app in question from their government mobile phones within 30 days. This is an additional move and not the first act of this – as everything seems – ongoing war.

Already during the presidency of Donald Trump in the country, the Chinese application TikTok has been targeted by the United States. Now Congress, the White House, the US Armed Forces as well as half of the states have banned the use of the Chinese app amid concerns that its parent company, ByteDance, would give users’ data to the Chinese government or promote on its behalf Beijing’s propaganda and disinformation.

According to a 2017 law, the Chinese government requires companies to provide the government with any personal data that concerns the country’s national security. To date, there is no evidence that the TikTok app has delivered any data. But last December, the alarm was raised when ByteDance said it had fired four employees who “hacked” into the personal data of two journalists from the news website Buzzfeed News and the Financial Times newspaper in an attempt to track down the source of the report. which was leaked for the company.

For its part, Beijing is reacting with a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry accusing the United States of abusing state power to crack down on foreign businesses. At the same time, reactions are recorded from the company, with its representative in the US questioning the bans, underlining that it has not been given the opportunity to offer answers while governments pull the cord from an application that, as noted by millions, they love. However, TikTok CEO Su Zichu is expected to testify next month before Congress and the Energy and Commerce Committee where he will be questioned about its privacy policy and data security practices, as well as the company’s relationship with Chinese government.

At the same time, other Western governments are targeting similar bans citing espionage fears. In particular, the Netherlands is already the first Member State of the “27” that has imposed restrictions on the use of the platform by state bodies and public services. Now it is the turn of the European Commission and the European Parliament. On the one hand, the Commission asks its executives to delete the Chinese application from their mobile phones. On the other hand, the European Parliament prohibits the use of the application on the professional devices of the staff. Canada also joins the dance of bans, with Ottawa announcing its decision on the grounds that TikTok poses risks to the privacy of communications and national security.