TikTok is in deep trouble, but the company may have come up with a way to avoid the worst of its misfortunes. The short video social network is currently banned on official devices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and other countries, including European institutions, as well as India, where it has been banned outright for several years.
And this is precisely the great fear that TikTok now has in the United States. With a bill in the works that could ban the app nationwide, TikTok faces a critical situation in a market where it has millions of users. But Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, has not been sitting idly by in the meantime.
When testifying at the U.S. Congress, the executive stated that the company does not hand over U.S. user data to the Chinese government (the main reason for this possible ban) and also confirmed that TikTok is carrying out a plan that is costing it millions of dollars, but with which they hope to gain the trust of the U.S. government and thus avoid its ban. Its name? Project Texas.
Project Texas, which began to be prepared in July of last year, is an initiative that would create a protection that would prevent unauthorized foreign access to U.S. users’ data. In addition, according to Chew, all U.S. user data would be stored in the United States, and would be overseen by a U.S. company (Oracle) with U.S. personnel.
All operations carried out by Project Texas would be supervised by an internal committee called “TikTok U.S. Data Security”, which would be approved by the U.S. Government itself. In this way, a U.S. company would supervise all U.S. users’ data, protecting them from any foreign intrusion.
A project that, despite its apparent appeal to the U.S. government, did not get the support Chew wanted, with very adverse opinions from both U.S. parties, Democrat and Republican, but that could be the key to avoid the banning of TikTok in the country. Now we just have to wait and see if the project goes ahead or if the US bill to veto the app does not end up being approved first.
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