TikTok has faced scrutiny over the past couple months about the safety of the app in America, leading to controversy about whether or not it should be banned to protect people’s data who use the app.
Most recently, Oracle, an American tech company, bought out the app from ByteDance in order to protect the app from being banned. Allegedly, ByteDance was selling users data to other companies, violating the safety and protection that the app should have.
“I am aware of the controversy, but I think that people should always use caution when using any app, not just TikTok,” said Angelina Gegaj, a senior.
Walmart, who is a subsidiary of Oracle, plans to partner with them and own a share of TikTok. Oracle plans to take 12.5 percent of TikTok global and Walmart will own about 7.5 percent, making the overall net worth of the app about $60 billion.
“Even though I don’t use the app, I think the app will be safer for kids who use it now that Oracle owns a portion of it,” said Angela Thomas, an Economics teacher.
Some people are glad that the app will be able to stick around, mainly the creators and people who enjoy watching them.
“I enjoy TikTok a lot. It’s a place where I can go if I’m ever stressed from school and need to take my mind off of it,” said Gegaj.
There are others that feel that the app should have been banned since user’s data was unsafe under ByteDance. Since it is a Chinese company, ByteDance was supposedly selling data from users to China, threatening our national security.
“I honestly was never really impacted when using the app. I uninstalled it before the whole idea that it was being used to spy came out,” said Jared Le Tourneur, a senior.
Under the new deal, Oracle plans to make the app safer to use for Americans, even though there has not been a set plan on how they will improve the government’s national security by owning the app. They plan to have full control of the app’s security so there will not be any way for ByteDance to access any Chinese data, since they still own a portion of the company.