China has accused the US of exaggerating national security fears about TikTok to suppress the Chinese company. US government agencies have been ordered to wipe the Chinese app from all staff devices within 30 days, because of fears over cybersecurity. Similar steps have been taken by Canada and the EU with some politicians calling for nationwide bans.

Spare a thought for TikTok executives.

In 2020, they narrowly escaped seeing their smash-hit app banned in the US by then-president Donald Trump, and faced a daily storm of questions about the cybersecurity risks posed by TikTok.

Thanks to numerous complex legal challenges, the debate largely fizzled out - and was eventually put to rest in 2021, when President Joe Biden overturned Trump's proposal.

You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief, both from TikTok itself and the millions of influencers who rely on the social media app to earn a living.

But now, in an irony which mirrors the video app's trademark looping format, we're back to where we started.

 

Except now the stakes are even higher.

"The version of TikTok raising all these concerns is not available in China itself. In an effort to protect Chinese students from the harmful effects of social media, the Chinese Communist Party has issued a rule that limits the time students can spend on TikTok to 40 minutes a day. And, they can view only videos with a patriotic theme or educational content such as science experiments and museum exhibits."

 

Fortune: Is America overreacting to TikTok with all of its new bans at high schools and colleges? Probably not.

 

The app was created by ByteDance, which is based in China and has ties to the Chinese government.