TIKTOK BAN TIKTOK : OPINION ESSAY

REMEMBER the TikTok ban? Does anyone? Few noticed when President Trump postponed the deadline to enforce a statutory ban on TikTok, the Chinese owned video-sharing app.

TikTok is used by almost half of all Americans. The ban was dropped for the third time.

Even allowing for the torrent of other news, it's astonishing how so little attention is being paid to what just months ago was deemed so serious a national security risk that both Republicans and Democrats demanded immediate and unprecedented action by adopting the ban.

STARTED in 2016 - TikTok became the web's fastest-growing app ever, with an astonishingly effective algorithm that shows users precisely the videos that they wanted [ or perhaps didn't realize they wanted ].

Almost two billion people use it around the world [ though its banned in China itself ], 170 million of them in the United States. That includes almost 65% of American teenagers.

LIKE most social media platforms - it collects vast amounts of data about its users.

President Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term, fearing that it could be used to spread Chinese disinformation, and that its owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, might be required to turn over details about American users to the government.

After courts blocked his attempt, the Biden administration sought a compromise in which an American board would oversee TikTok's operations in the United States and user data would be kept in Oracle's U.S. based computers.

ALTHOUGH the entire arrangement was to be subject to extensive audit and government oversight, the Biden administration - worried that China might still evade the restrictions and fearful that Republicans would accuse it of accommodating China - abandoned the proposal.

In the charged atmosphere of the presidential campaign, no party wanted to look weak on China, so both Republicans and Democrats rushed to enact a ban without seriously investigating whether a better solution existed.

On Inauguration Day, the problem fell into the hands of Mr. Trump. Crediting his 15 million TikTok followers with helping him get elected and clearly aware of the consequences if shutting down a popular app, Mr. Trump said he would rather ''save'' TikTok.

Since then, he has repeatedly postponed the ban in hopes that some deal could be made to keep the app working in the United States.

President Trump recently hinted that a deal is in the works, although it's not clear how or if the deal would satisfy the statute's requirements to rescind the ban.

The World Students Society thanks Glenn S. Gerstell.