Federal court moves TikTok closer to U.S. ban

A federal appeals court ruled that TikTok poses a national security risk, moving the platform with 170 million U.S. users closer to a potential ban. The Chinese-owned app must find a U.S. buyer by January 19 or face removal from app stores. However, Professor Justin Cappos argues that banning TikTok is a misguided solution to broader social media privacy and security concerns: “There’s an awful lot of data that’s being collected by these other U.S.-based companies that’s not well-regulated and could equally well be used to spy on people in different ways. I think this is a situation where it’s easy to blame a foreign company for something like this, and really Meta and others share equal if not more blame for the problems that we have from social media.”