Pittsburgh content creators brace for impending ban of TikTok

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Pittsburgh content creators are preparing for the potential shutdown of TikTok, an app used by half of the country

Creator Ellen Kotzin shared her goodbye with her 65,000 followers earlier in the week.

She gained many of her followers by posting videos of hills in Pittsburgh, and the many daunting roads that traverse them. Her handle is @PittsburghHills. 

“It’s really a lot of fun,” she said. “They are so steep and scary.”

She has already been posting on other apps in advance of an app shutdown.

“Change is inevitable, and I knew that something was gonna happen,” Kotzin said “I’ve been preparing for this for a long time. There are some parts of me that are sad that it’s going because I did meet a lot of good friends through Tiktok.”

She’s made her peace with losing access to the app. 

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m not crying”

Many others are far less ready to let go. 

“Some people have their livelihoods based off of it. I know that, and I feel bad for them,” Kotzin said.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that bans Tiktok on the grounds it could pose a national security risk because the app is based in China.

“But for those of us in cybersecurity, it deeply concerns me,” said Tom Dugas, Duquesne University’s Chief Information Security Officer. “Certainly, you know, for folks who are using it, I worry about their information, how the Chinese government may or may not be using it.”

He also worries about how they could use it to sway public opinion. He says the difference between TikTok and American-based apps like Facebook and X is that the Chinese government has the legal authority to see the data of tech companies which are based there.”

“They simply ask and they are given,” Dugas said. 

Some TikTok users have already migrated to another China-based app, Rednote. 

“There’s nothing that leads me to believe that Red Note is any better or any worse than Tiktok in terms of our national security and threats to our country,” Dugas said. “So I worry that we’re just trading one evil for another.”He could see a scenario where the U.S. ends up playing a sort of digital whack-a-mole where every few months the U.S. bans another China-based app that has grown in popularity with users who were originally on TikTok.

He believes federal authorities should look at banning other social media sites that are based in countries that are adversarial to the U.S., not just those in China. 

“I do think we need to look at all of them,” Dugas said. “Our national security is of the utmost importance. We need to take it seriously.” 

Already he’s heard of people working to circumnavigate the restrictions and continue using the app if it is banned by using a VPN, which in effect allows people to digitally pretend they are in another country. 

Importantly, he says it would just create more risk for organizations and individuals.

Kotzin said she is not joining Rednote, but not because of any potential risks, she just does not want to spend the effort to build a new page from scratch. 

“There’s so many people that share our data anyway, so I don’t know any different,” she said.