Perhaps the biggest news in tech or social media currently happening can be found within the video sharing social media site TikTok and the recent controversy that has come around the way the platform may be operating – a post on Reddit that was retweeted by activist group Anonymous on July 1st suggested that the app owned by a Chinese parent company was perhaps tracking much more data that it should as the post outlined how the app was tracking data such as your hardware information and network data – and whilst a follow up from other researchers suggested that nothing amiss was being done with this data and it was very similar to other social media apps, it was also stated that the concern was that something could be done with this data if public attitude changed which is where the worry had been found. The social media giant has had some trouble shedding it’s Chinese authoritarian links in the past as it has previously blocked users from post certain media, but this release spurred an immediate response from some.
The first came from India, as the country quickly banned TikTok and removed the app from the various online marketplaces along with 58 other Chinese backed apps which removed an estimated 400 million users from the platform as it continued to be the country with one of the biggest user bases in the world – soon after Australia and the US announced that they were also assessing the changes to consider doing the same following the recent US ban on having the application on all governmentally issued devices following security concerns around the use of the app. The most recent country to perhaps join the list is within the UK as growing tensions with China continue to grow following the UK stance on assisting protesters in Hong Kong with citizenship despite the ongoing privacy concerns in the country. The platform boasts almost one billion active users worldwide, and with the current changing attitude toward it as many are actively boycotting whilst just as many trying to save it, it could lead to one of the biggest user losses in modern smart devices if the app were to be banned from more countries which it seems may become a possibility.
This isn’t the only change we’ve seen in the world of mobile apps during the past few weeks as well as mobile gamers have also been impacted with recent changes to the online gambling genre – during the pandemic advertising restrictions had been placed on these services to prevent new players alongside the changes to initiatives such as Gamstop aimed at reducing options for problem players, despite this the number of services available continue to grow as these ones aren’t covered by gamstop and offer users a place to play despite these changes.
Regulation change like that in gaming is something that could be seen in social media applications moving forward if attitude continues to change more in the way of data protection and privacy, and could see a shifting expectation on how developers build apps in general.
