This week in class Chris, Anna and Lisa did a great job of explaining what ‘Fake News’ is and how we can distinguish if what we are reading is legitimate or not. I found it very interesting that the very next morning I woke to a Facebook Message from one of my older brothers. It was telling all of the family that we need to stop using TikTok because Trudeau is banning it. “Trudeau Government Bans TikTok from Operating in Canada – but Canadians can still use it” I found the title alone very shocking and that it had a mixed message. The article is very selective on what information that they share. The one reason it states that they are shutting the two Canadian TikTok locations down is national security and that there are claims that TikTok users data could be shared with the Chinese Government.

I knew that I needed to look more into this as one article doesn’t mean that something is legit. I found a few more articles: “What the federal ban on TikTok’s Canadian operations means for you” this article is much the same as the first but goes into a bit more detail. They discuss the fact that many jobs will be lost with the closing of these two locations. It also discusses how data can be shared with China and we wouldn’t know until it was too late. Another article “Canada orders shutdown of TikTok’s Canadian business, app access to continue” discusses many of the same topics. It gets a little more into detail about the fact that it was a National Security risk that was being reviewed and was related to ByteDance Ltd’s which is the parent company of TikTok based out of China.

The more articles you read the more you become confused but also fully engaged in what this could mean for those that use TikTok. I also started looking for videos and found a number: “Canada bans TikTok Business Operations” , “Should TikTok be banned in Canada“, “Is a ban next?” , and “TikTok ban in Canada” among many others. Some of these videos are ones that make you think while others are poking fun at the entire issue. As of right now this is something that is still up to each individual user. We all have the responsibility to look into the apps that we are putting on our phones, tablets, iPad, etc. We need to ensure that we are looking into all the information about the app so that we can decide for ourselves if it is one that we want to use or not.

What are your thoughts on this ‘ban’ of TikTok? Are you going to continue using it if you have it? Does this make a difference to you or will it make a difference for you when deciding to add apps to your devices?