Tech Expert: TikTok Ban Not East Switch Flip

The process of banning TikTok in the United States, more complicated than it sounds according to a Tennessee Tech Cybersecurity expert.

Cybersecurity Center Associate Director for Workforce Development Eric Brown said the ban will require many different independent service providers and companies to work together on multiple large projects. Brown said there are two main parts to the ban: removing TikTok from app stores and shutting down the app’s different servers.

“When the first conversations about banning TikTok came around it was like, ‘Well the government just needs to hit the switch,'” Brown said. “Well there is no such switch. What it actually looks like is a combination of items that hopefully gets it ninety-something percent disabled.”

Brown said it would be challenging to know if TikTok would ever fully disabled in the nation because there are ways to access third-party app stores that are not as highly regulated. Brown said these app stores could distribute TikTok and make it harder to identify the app by changing its name and publishing it under another company.

“Software can be handed around in the public through these means and it’s not going to be a single company that they can identify,” Brown said. “It can be wandering around in the public.”

Brown said these third-party app stores are similar to the old peer-to-peer networks like Napster that were used for illegal music and movie trading. Brown said blocking TikTok from the network is also difficult because there are many different servers for the app scattered around the nation.

“It could be possible that while you block certain things other servers could still be active,” Brown said. “So there is a technological challenge in doing it as well.”

Brown said there have been large efforts to ban different kinds of software in the country’s past but it has never been done on such a large scale and while dealing with smartphones and applications. Brown said the conversation is now about deciding how to compel the commercial sector to comply with federal guidelines: financially through threat of penalty or forcibly through removal of service.

“We are an open culture,” Brown said. “We are not the great firewall of China where they can just go through, click a few things, and just stop the flow of something into the country.”