It happened. Last week, President Biden signed a bill that prohibits the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by its agencies (with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes).

ByteDance poured fuel on the fire two weeks ago. Employees from TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance were caught snooping on journalists and accessing their data. These were American journalists who had obtained leaks about ByteDance. Even ByteDance’s CEO admitted it looks bad amid growing concern in D.C. on where the privacy line is drawn. He agreed that its “public trust had been significantly undermined.” No bueno. 

Even with TikTok striking the right chord in 2022 – establishing itself as the  challenger to Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix, and in some ways, Spotify and Google Search — this could be just the beginning of challenges to come for the app.

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