TikTok: 3 risks that Western governments see in the social network (and what the Chinese company responds to)

But now, in an irony that mirrors the video app’s looping format, we are back where we started.

The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and many European countries have prohibited government officials from installing TikTok on phones for official use.

And unlike in the past, the stakes these days are even higher.

When Trump’s proposed ban was discussed three years ago, TikTok was already installed on around 800 million devices around the world. Currently has 3.5 billion downloadsaccording to the company that analyzes Sensor Tower applications.

To this must be added an increase in geopolitical tensions between China and Western countries. It is clear that the global future of TikTok andIt is in its worst scenario.

So what are the cybersecurity concerns about this social network that have arisen and how does the company respond to them?

Critics frequently accuse TikTok of collect large amounts of user data. It is cited as evidence in a cybersecurity report published in July 2022 by Internet 2.0 researchers, an Australian company.

Researchers studied the app’s source code and found that it engages in “excessive data collection.”

Analysts said that TikTok collects details such as users’ location, what specific device they are using, and what other apps they are on. his phone.

However, a similar test by Citizen Lab concluded: “Compared to other popular social media platforms, TikTok collects similar types of data to track user behavior.”

Similarly, a recent report from the Georgia Institute of Technology published in January noted: “The key fact here is that most other social networks and mobile apps do the same thing.”

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

Although it annoys privacy experts, most of us accept that handing over large amounts of private data It’s the deal we make with social media.

In exchange for providing their services to us for free, they collect information about us and use it to sell advertising on their platform, or sell our data to other companies who try to advertise to us elsewhere on the internet.

The problem critics have with TikTok is that it’s property of tech giant ByteDancewhich is based in Beijing, which gives it a very different character as an application that is not located in the US.

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

TikTok’s spokeswoman told the BBC that the company is fully independent and “has not provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we if they asked us to.”

For years, lawmakers in the US, along with others around the world, have assumed one level of confidence: that data collected by these platforms will not be used to purposes that may endanger national security.

Donald Trump’s 2020 executive order alleged that TikTok’s data collection could allow China to “track the locations of federal employees and contractors, create files of personal information for blackmail purposes, and conduct corporate espionage.”

The evidence so far points to this being only a theoretical risk, But fears are stoked by a Chinese law passed in 2017.

Article seven of China’s National Intelligence Law states that all Chinese organizations and citizens must “support, assist, and cooperate” with Chinese intelligence efforts.

This sentence is often quoted by people who are suspicious of not just TikTok, but all Chinese companies.

However, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology argue that this sentence is out of context and point out that the law also includes warnings that protect the rights of users and private companies.

Since 2020, TikTok executives they have repeatedly ensured that their Chinese employees cannot access user data that does not originate in that country.

But in December, ByteDance admitted that several of its workers in Beijing obtained the details of at least two American journalists and a “small number” of other users, to track their locations and check whether they were meeting with TikTok employees suspected of leaking information. to the media.

The TikTok spokeswoman says the employees who accessed the data were fired in December.

The firm insists that user information are stored in the US and Singapore and have never been stored in China.

The company also argues that it is in the process of setting up data warehouses elsewhere, for example in Ireland, where it plans to process all data from the UK and the European Union by 2024.

In November 2022, Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), told US lawmakers: “The Chinese government could … control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used to influence people.”

Those concerns are compounded by the fact that TikTok’s sister app, Douyin, which is only available in China, is heavily censored and, according to various reports, it is designed to encourage non-conflicting educational material to go viral.

All social networks are heavily censored in Chinawhere there is an army of internet policemen removing content that criticizes the government or causes political unrest.

On this point, the TikTok spokeswoman said: “Our community guidelines prohibit disinformation that could cause harm to our community or the general public, which includes engaging in coordinated false behavior.”

When TikTok was just getting started, there were high-profile censorship cases In the app: A user in the US had his account suspended for speaking out about the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims in the Xinjiang region.

After a harsh public reaction, TikTok apologized and reinstated the account.

Since then, there have been few instances of censorship, beyond the kind of controversial moderation decisions that all platforms have to deal with.

Citizen Lab researchers carried out a comparison of TikTok and Douyin. They concluded that TikTok does not employ the same political censorship.

“The platform does not enforce obvious post censorship,” the researchers said.

Analysts from the Georgia Institute of Technology also searched for topics like Taiwan independence or jokes about Chinese President Xi Jinping, and concluded: “Videos in all these categories can be easily found on TikTok. Many are popular and widely shared.” .

The general picture, then, is one of fears about Things that could theoretically happen.

Critics of the platform argue that TikTok is a “Trojan horse” which, while seemingly harmless, could prove to be a powerful weapon in times of conflict.

The app is already banned in India, which took action in 2020, and dozens more of Chinese origin.

However, a US ban on TikTok could have a big impact on the app, as it typically US allies are often on the same page with those decisions.

That was evident when the US successfully led calls to block Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei’s deployment of 5G infrastructure due to, again, hypothetical risks.

It is worth noting, of course, that these risks are like a one-way street.

China doesn’t have to worry about US apps because Chinese citizens’ access to them has been blocked for many years.

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