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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 16, 2025
US: Rather Than Ban TikTok, the Best Way to Protect App Users is to Strengthen Privacy, Transparency, and Security Protections Online
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WASHINGTON—With the January 19 deadline approaching for TikTok’s owner ByteDance to divest its US operations or be banned in the United States, Freedom House’s research director for technology and democracy, Allie Funk, issued the following statement:
“While the Supreme Court continues to consider the constitutionality of the TikTok ban, it is clear that TikTok presents serious and unique national security and human rights concerns. The platform’s parent company, ByteDance, is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has a record of coercing the private sector into conducting censorship and surveillance at home and abroad. The risks of TikTok being exploited by the CCP for malign purposes—for instance, to access personal data to track journalists or shape the information environment in the United States in the event of a national crisis—are very real and need to be taken seriously.
“At the same time, it is also clear that millions of people in the United States use TikTok to express themselves, access information, and participate civically. The First Amendment provides Americans with some of the strongest legal protections for speech in the world.
“Weighing these considerations, this particular law on TikTok does not correctly thread the needle between addressing the problems of the platform and also ensuring that Americans’ constitutional free speech rights are protected. If the ban comes into effect, it would instead create an outright and disproportionate restriction on the platform for millions of people. It would also undermine the United States as a global advocate for internet freedom and could encourage censorship around the world.
“While there is no simple solution to this problem, a better approach to protecting rights and security would be to adopt legislation that strengthens data privacy, platform transparency, and cybersecurity. This would force TikTok to operate more responsibly and better protect Americans’ data, while shedding light on the influence that ByteDance and the CCP have over the platform. This approach would also help address challenges raised by other social media platforms, including those with similar ties to authoritarian states.”
The United States is rated Free
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in Freedom in the World 2024 and Free
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in Freedom on the Net 2024.
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