US opens national security investigation into TikTok

The U.S. government has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly, according to two people familiar with the matter.

While the $1 billion acquisition was completed two years ago, U.S. lawmakers have been calling in recent weeks for a national security probe into TikTok, concerned the Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content, and raising questions about how it stores personal data.

TikTok – Wikipedia link for those of us who have no idea what it is – is incredibly popular among younger people, but since it’s an entirely Chinese platform, there’s concerns about what, exactly, the data it stores is being used for.