Why are governments cracking down on TikTok?

The Dutch government has become the latest one to order its officials to remove the Chinese-owned TikTok app from officials’ phones.

The Netherlands’ interior ministry said on Tuesday it discouraged, on phones distributed by the government, the use of all apps from “countries with an aggressive cyber-programme targeted at the Netherlands or Dutch interests”.What is TikTok and how popular is the app?
TikTok is a social media app dedicated to short-form videos, with more than one billion active users across 150 countries.

In the United States alone, more than 150 million people use the app, according to its CEO.

In comparison, Facebook has nearly three billion active users, while Instagram has more than 1.2 billion.Earlier this month, the Joe Biden administration backed a bipartisan bill that would give Washington the power to ban TikTok in the US.