With the threat of a US ban looming, TikTok is looking to underline its value to the US economy, via a new initiative through which the platform will highlight how SMBs are using the app to connect with their customers, and the community, to build their business.
The new 'TikTok Sparks Good' docu-series will share a range of short stories 'that celebrate the diverse and inspirational creator success that transcend beyond TikTok to create real life change'.
Which, ostensibly, celebrates these creators and the successes that they're seeing in the app. But it's also a fairly transparent vehicle through which to potentially sway to US regulators who may be considering whether to ban the app.

And TikTok's laying it pretty thick:

"TikTok is a space for Americans where the ability to change not just one's own life, but that of others becomes a reality. From helping their parent's small businesses saved through first-generation children to having creators rallying the community into supporting our veterans, this is where anyone can start to build community, connect, educate, and help economic opportunity come about. We are in awe of what can happen on the TikTok community as that power makes the platform into becoming a catalyst for good.

I mean, that is not not true, but at the same time, TikTok has also been the source of a range of harmful trends, negative psychological impacts for teens, exploitation, misinformation, etc.

Whether the platform is a net positive or negative is not entirely clear - while that question within itself isn't part of the assessment as to whether TikTok should be allowed to continue operating in the US either way.

That comes down to the fact that the app's links to China, and the provisions to China's cybersecurity laws which would require Chinese-owned businesses sharing user data with the CCP on request.

There is nothing to indicate that the CCP has asked for this sort of thing yet, or that TikTok has ever given it. But the idea is that TikTok could serve as a spying tool in the US, using information from TikTok to follow the movements of citizens or to obtain personal data in order to use that for blackmail.

For the most part, that may not seem like a lesser concern – the Chinese Government might not so much care about the hokey TikTok clips people like to share. But then it can be a problem.
This emerged after it was revealed last December that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance representatives used the data of TikTok to track the movements of journalists in the US with a goal of finding out which employees of ByteDance leak information to the press.
According to The Financial Times.

Over the summer, four employees on the ByteDance internal audit team looked into the sharing of internal information to journalists. Two members of staff in the US and two in China gained access to the IP addresses and other personal data of FT journalist Cristina Criddle, to work out if she was in the proximity of any ByteDance employees, the company said."

That's the key concern around misuse of TikTok data, and in that context, growing bans on the app for government-owned devices make sense, because that is a potential vector to track people's movements and who they're meeting with.

Here's where there could be a clear and present danger for government officials or those in possession of classified information, though one must acknowledge that to the random person on TikTok who only uploads videos of funny one-liners and dance compilations, this doesn't necessarily seem like a monumental threat.

So while TikTok is doing all it can to highlight its value, that's really sort of an aside and doesn't really bear much on the core of the broader ban discussions.

But that does seem to be the focus here. And while it's interesting to note the ways in which TikTok has aided these SMBs, fairly clear what the intention is here, so to speak.