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Recent years have seen significant concerns over the social media platform known as TikTok. Despite TikTok's popularity, especially with GenZ, the company's ownership and terms of service conditions pose a cause for concern in the minds of many.

The Chinese company known as ByteDance owns TikTok.

Meanwhile, the social media company's terms of service grant it access to a lot of data on users' devices. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of TikTok users are not reading through these conditions before agreeing to them and creating their videos on the platform.

However, because of TikTok's ownership and terms of service, some US officials believe the platform poses a natural security concern. This is why Texas is now working to crack down against TikTok.

Texas governor sounds off against TikTok

Yesterday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott brought forward an initiative to prohibit the use of TikTok on networks and devices issued by the state's government.

Abbott, in releasing this initiative, warned that TikTok poses "security risks" that Texas can't afford to ignore.

Furthermore, the governor believes that due to the important affairs conducted on government-issued devices and networks, the state can't "underestimate" the negative impacts it could suffer from getting its wires crossed with TikTok.

This checks out. A key part of TikTok's terms of service conditions involves giving the company access to each individual's internet activity, along with major data harvesting.

Therefore, if TikTok remains unchecked on US government-issued networks and devices, the Chinese regime could easily access data pertaining to state governments.

Agencies within the Texas state government have until next Wednesday to implement measures that are in keeping with Abbott's initiative.

Other GOP leaders in states like South Dakota and Ohio have reached similar conclusions about TikTok and the risks it poses.

Rising tensions with China

Over the course of this month alone, tensions between the United States and China have flared. Days ago, our country downed a Chinese surveillance balloon that was hovering over our airspace.

China reacted negatively to this, deeming the move to be overly aggressive. The communist regime likewise claimed it would consider how to respond to this going forward.

All things considered, it might not be such a bad idea to make sure that China cannot access the United States' sensitive government data at any level.