TikTok

Reasons to avoid

1. TikTok's US operations are now overseen by Oracle, whose founder Larry Ellison is the largest known private donor to the Israel Defense Forces. In July 2025, TikTok hired a former Israeli soldier to police content on the platform. Critics warn this gives openly pro-Israel leadership direct control over what speech 170 million Americans see.responsiblestatecraft.org2025-09-29
2. The DOJ and FTC filed a federal lawsuit in August 2024 alleging TikTok knowingly allowed millions of children under 13 to create accounts and collected their data without parental consent — violating a 2019 consent order TikTok had already agreed to, and ignoring deletion requests from parents.ftc.gov2024-08-02
3. Congress passed a bipartisan law in April 2024 — upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court in January 2025 — requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok's US operations or face a ban, citing fears the Chinese government could access data on 170 million American users.factcheck.org2025-02-01
4. Congress banned TikTok from all federally issued devices and networks in December 2022, citing national security concerns about data access by the Chinese government.spectrumnews1.com2025-09-23
5. A 2024 RAND analysis found that TikTok's video library — collected from users — gives ByteDance and China an unparalleled dataset to train deepfake AI systems, a threat largely absent from public debate on the app.rand.org2024-08-14
6. US intelligence agencies confirmed that TikTok accounts run by a Chinese government propaganda arm targeted candidates from both political parties during the 2022 US midterm elections, and warned China may use the platform to interfere in future elections.axios.com2024-03-11