Why governments are worried about TikTok – 03/26/2023 – Market

Calls for a US ban on TikTok have reignited the global debate over the app’s cybersecurity risks.

This week, the CEO of TikTok was questioned for more than four hours at his first hearing in the US Congress, amid growing calls for a nationwide ban on the app that, for some people, is a concern. of national security.

Shou Zi Chew has been advocating for months that the Chinese video-sharing platform is safe, despite a wave of bans from government officials in the US, UK, Canada and several European countries, which have removed it from employees’ cell phones. .

China has accused the United States of exaggerating cybersecurity fears to crack down on the company, which is experiencing rapid growth. But momentum is growing to force its sale in the United States or for its complete ban, in the face of allegations that the social network could be used as a tool for espionage.

Let’s think about TikTok executives for a moment.

In 2020, they narrowly escaped seeing their hugely successful app banned in the United States by then-President Donald Trump. And they faced a daily barrage of questions about the cybersecurity risks posed by TikTok.

Thanks to numerous and complex legal processes, the debate practically died out – and ended up being closed in 2021, when President Joe Biden revoked Trump’s proposal.

You can almost hear a collective sigh of relief from both TikTok itself and the millions of influencers who rely on the social networking app for a living.

But now, in an irony that mimics the looping format of the video app’s logo, we’re back where we started. With one exception: the current stakes are even greater.

When Trump proposed banning the app three years ago, TikTok had been downloaded about 800 million times worldwide. It currently has 3.5 billion downloads, according to app analytics company Sensor Tower.

What are the three concerns about TikTok’s cybersecurity that keep coming up again, and how has the company responded to them?

1. TikTok collects an ‘excessive’ amount of data

A TikTok spokeswoman told the BBC that the app’s data collection is “in line with industry practice”.

Critics often accuse TikTok of collecting massive amounts of user data.

A cybersecurity report published in July 2022 by researchers at the Australian Internet 2.0 technology company is often cited as proof. The researchers studied the application’s source code and concluded that it does “excessive data collection”.

Analysts claim that TikTok collects details such as a user’s location, which specific device they are using and what other apps are installed on their device.

But a similar test conducted by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto in Canada concluded that “compared to other popular social media platforms, TikTok collects similar types of data to track user behavior.”

Similarly, a report from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States stated in January that “the key fact here is that most other mobile and social networking apps do the same things”.

2. TikTok could be used by the Chinese government to spy on users

A TikTok spokeswoman told the BBC that the company is fully independent and “has not provided user data to the Chinese government and would not do so if asked.”

Despite the irritation of security experts, most of us accept that handing over large amounts of private data is part of the deal we make with social media. In exchange for their free services, they collect knowledge about us, which they use to sell advertising on their platform – or they sell our data to other companies who try to advertise for us elsewhere on the internet.

The issue critics have with TikTok is that the app is owned by Beijing-based technology giant ByteDance. That is, it is the only one of the main applications that is not American.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, for example, collect similar amounts of data, but they are all companies founded in the United States.

Lawmakers in the US and most other countries have considered for years that there is a level of trust – that the data collected by these platforms will not be used for dishonest reasons that could put national security at risk.

Donald Trump’s 2020 executive order claimed that data collection by TikTok could potentially allow China to “track the location of public officials and contractors, form dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct commercial espionage.”

Evidence so far indicates that this is only a theoretical risk, but fears are heightened by a vague Chinese law passed in 2017. Article 7 of China’s National Intelligence Law states that all Chinese companies and citizens must “support , assist and cooperate” with Chinese intelligence efforts.

This article is often mentioned by people who are suspicious of not just TikTok but all Chinese companies. But researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology maintain that it was taken out of context. They note that the law also includes caveats that protect the rights of users and private companies.

Since 2020, TikTok executives have repeatedly tried to assure people that Chinese employees do not have access to user data outside of China. But in December, ByteDance admitted that several of its employees in Beijing were given access to data on at least two American journalists and a “small number” of others, to track their locations and verify that they were meeting with officials. from TikTok suspected of leaking information to the press.

TikTok’s spokeswoman claims that employees who had access to the data were fired in December.

The company insists that user data is held in the United States and Singapore and has never been stored in China. It says it is also in the process of setting up data warehouses elsewhere, such as Ireland, where it plans to process all UK and EU data by 2024.

3. TikTok could be used as a ‘brainwashing’ tool

A TikTok spokesperson stated, “Our Community Guidelines prohibit misinformation that could harm our community or the general public, which includes engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

In November 2022, FBI Director Christopher Wray told US lawmakers: “The Chinese government could… control the recommendations algorithm, which could be used to influence operations.”

These concerns are further heightened by the heavy censorship imposed on TikTok’s sister app, Douyin – only available in China. And reports indicate that it was designed to make safe and educational material go viral more easily.

All social networks are heavily censored in China by an army of internet police, who delete content criticizing the government or calling for political unrest.

Early in TikTok’s rise, there were significant instances of censorship on the app. A US user had her account suspended for discussing the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, China, by the Beijing government. After intense backlash from the public, TikTok apologized and reactivated the account.

Since then, there have been some cases of censorship, other than the controversial moderation decisions that all platforms have to face.

Citizen Lab researchers compared TikTok with Douyin. They concluded that TikTok does not use the same kind of political censorship as its version for Chinese audiences. For the researchers, “the platform does not practice obvious censorship of posts”.

Analysts at the Georgia Institute of Technology also looked into topics such as Taiwanese independence and bantering Chinese leader Xi Jinping. His conclusion was: “Videos from all these categories can easily be found on TikTok. Many are popular and widely shared.”

Theoretical risk

The general picture, therefore, is one of theoretical fears – and theoretical risks.

Critics argue that TikTok is a “Trojan horse” – that is, it seems harmless, but could prove to be a powerful weapon in times of conflict, for example.

TikTok has already been banned in India, which took action against the app and dozens of other Chinese platforms in 2020. But a US ban on TikTok could have a huge impact on the platform, as American allies typically go along with such decisions.

This was evident when the United States successfully led calls to block Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from developing 5G infrastructure – again, in this case, based on theoretical risks.

And it must be noted, of course, that these risks are a one-way street. China doesn’t have to worry about US apps because their access for Chinese citizens has been blocked for several years.