Over 150 million United States citizens use the platform Tik Tok (a video social media platform). What began as Musical.ly back in April of 2014 and purchased by the Chinese company Tik Tok, is a social media platform that reaches practically all across the globe, impacting nearly 835 million users worldwide on the daily. The app exists as a platform where many of its US users exercise their freedom of speech in their content. Crazily, in the past months of 2023 speculation throughout the US government rose, calling attention to the concern that Tik Tok –being a Chinese owned app– actively gathers user’s information… as if every other app is not. The legitimate concern points at the fact that the app is not owned by the US –the group of people the app mostly consists of– but the way at which the court is handling the case does not settle correctly with most Tik Tok users and younger generations. This does not pull to the fact that they use the platform but more because the app exists as a form of each US citizen’s first amendment right, the freedom of speech.
Along with confusing questions, and debatable points, the CEO of Tik Tok, Shou Zi Chew testified to congress March 23, 2023 to defend Tik Tok from the government’s allegations of safety issues. The overarching goal the US government believes as the only way would be to either ban the app in the United States, or get Chew to sell the company to the US. This not only gives US “access” to every user’s information but would this put the government in a significant amount of control over US citizens freedom of speech?