After India's ban, the Trump administration said it was considering a similar crackdown on TikTok over national security concerns, causing fear and anxiety among the young community
Some have engaged in open revolt, retaliating by posting negative reviews of Trump’s 2020 campaign app. The app received more than 700 negative reviews Wednesday and only 26 positive ones, according to data from the analytics firm Sensor Tower. It currently has a one-star rating.
“For Gen Z and millennials, TikTok is our clubhouse, and Trump threatened it,” Yori Blacc, a 19-year-old TikTok user in California, told Time in an interview about the app ratings. “If you’re going to mess with us, we will mess with you.”
Suspicion of TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has come from the private sector, too. On Friday, Amazon asked its employees to delete TikTok from any phone that can “access company email,” according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. Several Amazon employees expressed disappointment at the request on Twitter. (Hours later, the company backtracked and said the email had been sent in error.)
Beneath the users’ frustration, though, there is anxiety.
For many young people, TikTok has been an outlet for creative expression and human connection, especially throughout months of distance learning and social isolation.
“If TikTok did shut down, it would be like losing a bunch of really close friends I made, losing all the progress and work I did to get a big following,” said Ashleigh Hunniford, 17, who has more than 400,000 followers on the app. “It’s a big part of who I’ve become as a teenager. Losing it would be like losing a little bit of me.”
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