Forget TikTok, Americans are already great at spying on each otherForget TikTok, Americans are already great at spying on each other

A new Supreme Court ruling could shutter China's TikTok over concerns about its data collection practices. But don't worry! Plenty of other American companies are ready to fill the TikTok void.

Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies

January 17, 2025

4 Min Read
TikTok logo, app icon, logo displayed on a smartphone
(Source: Michele Ursi/Alamy Stock Photo)

A Supreme Court ruling Friday paves the way for a shutdown of China's TikTok.

"Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok's data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary," according to the court's ruling.

But don't worry all you TikTok makeup, dance and gaming influencers out there (who of course also subscribe to Light Reading). Trump 2.0 is going to save you... Maybe.

"The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it," Trump wrote on the social media site he owns and will probably profit from in a way that is definitely not illegal, haha. "My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!"

I will definitely stay tuned for the next episode of "Hype House: The Apprentice," which will soon be streaming exclusively on Truth Social or Twitter, depending on which side of the bed Vice President Musk gets up on.

Side note: Is this the part where we recall that it was Trump himself who first started warning us about the dangers of TikTok?

Gotta catch them all

Anyway, if you're worried that a TikTok ban might prevent the Chinese from spying on our kids: Fear not! There are apparently plenty of other American companies out there ready to fill the TikTok vacuum.

Consider: General Motors and its OnStar business. In a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission announced Friday, GM is now banned for five years from disclosing OnStar users' geolocation and behavior data to consumer reporting agencies. That's because GM was illegally collecting OnStar users' precise geolocation and driving behavior data and selling it to third parties, without drivers' consent. The data – including every instance of hard braking, late-night driving and speeding – was ultimately being used by insurance companies to deny insurance claims and set rates.

Oh and GM apparently isn't alone. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, earlier this week sued insurance company Allstate for illegally collecting Americans' location data from smartphone apps like Life360, GasBuddy and Fuel Rewards.

Thousands of other apps – including Candy Crush, Tinder and MyFitnessPal – are probably leaking that same location data, according to a Wired article from last week.

And don't even get me started on T-Mobile, which in 2021 began automatically enrolling its customers into a program that will apparently allow the operator to build a multibillion-dollar ad-tech business using its customers' location data.

So don't worry TikTokers, even if your favorite video app gets killed, your location data is probably still available somewhere on the open market.

The TikTok effect

It's worth noting that the biggest beneficiaries of a TikTok ban might be the wireless network operators charged with connecting TikTok users to the Internet. That's because TikTok accounts for an incredible 12% of global mobile daily traffic volumes, according to Sandvine

Specifically, TikTok contributes about 173 MB of daily average volume on mobile networks, with at least 36% of mobile users accessing the service in a day. Sandvine's daily average "app user volume" reflects how many subscribers are using a service at least once in a day.

Thus, a TikTok ban could immediately lighten the load on the world's wireless networks.

But who is this Sandvine that's collecting all this interesting data, you ask? Why, it's just a Canadian company that was added to the US government's blacklist last year "after its products were used to conduct mass web-monitoring and censorship and target human rights activists and dissidents, including by enabling the misuse of commercial spyware," according to US officials.

Sandvine is off that list now, though, after it overhauled its corporate structure, leadership and business model. Stay tuned for what they'll do next!

About the Author

Mike Dano

Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading

Mike Dano is Light Reading's Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies. Mike can be reached at [email protected], @mikeddano or on LinkedIn.

Based in Denver, Mike has covered the wireless industry as a journalist for almost two decades, first at RCR Wireless News and then at FierceWireless and recalls once writing a story about the transition from black and white to color screens on cell phones.

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like