TikTok: The Greatest Threat To American Democracy Since Facebook

TikTok has quickly become a favorite among Americans of every generation, from Gen Z’ers to Boomers since joining the U.S. digital marketplace in 2018. Since then, it has grown into one of the most popular mobile apps, with roughly 80 million monthly active users in the United States, surpassing Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to become the world’s most downloaded iOS app.

Unlike the other social platforms, which are U.S.-based, TikTok is owned by a Beijing-based internet technology company called ByteDance. Why is this important? In short, TikTok has recently come under fire for its data collection strategy. The app purportedly gathers everything from your location to your text messages and contacts. And the real danger lies with how they will leverage the data they’re collecting. Will they use it for advertising or will they use it to sway an election?

What’s being collected?

Just last month, it was confirmed that TikTok is still reading your clipboard every one to three keystrokes. Your text messages, emails, passwords, bank logins and more are being tracked and could potentially get leaked.

Reddit user /u/bangorlol reverse-engineered the TikTok app and wrote a post urging people to ditch the social app. In his exploration of the back-end of the app, he…