TikTok is not doing anything more nefarious than any other of social media companies that we talk about. They're based in America, but it's not an American company. And so that's the thing that I'm not even sure anyone knows how to actually address still. Do we have any evidence to suggest that TikTok has ever done anything untoward with the massive amounts of data that this company has? Not really. But there was this one thing last year where ByteDance admitted that TikTok employees improperly accessed the low-end.
Politicians across the United States are calling for an outright ban on the popular social media platform. Alex Heath, deputy editor at The Verge, explains how TikTok hopes to pre-empt one from ever passing.
This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Haleema Shah, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices