Time to drop TikTok from app stores?

TikTok accounts run by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government have accumulated millions of followers and tens of millions of views (Photo: Bloomberg)
TikTok accounts run by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government have accumulated millions of followers and tens of millions of views (Photo: Bloomberg)

Summary

An opportunity for Apple and Google to lead.

One can doubt, as Milton and Rose Friedman did, whether free trade is even possible with China as long as the country suffers under the yoke of a communist dictatorship. One can even hold such doubt but still oppose U.S. government regulation of TikTok, the social media giant owned by Chinese company ByteDance, on the grounds that it will invite further Washington regulation of technology in general. But there’s an increasingly strong case for Apple and Alphabet-owned Google to decide on their own that, consistent with their stated values and long-term business objectives, TikTok should be suspended at least temporarily from their app stores.

Back in September the Journal’s Meghan Bobrowsky reported:

A top TikTok executive pushed back against senators grilling the company over its links to China, expressing confidence a deal with the U.S. government would safeguard American users’ data...

“We think that all data collected related to Americans and then accessed in China is a problem," Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, said during the hearing. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, said, “There’s a real risk that TikTok could alter its algorithm to promote or censor content on Beijing’s behalf."

TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas said at the hearing that the company is committed to the security of its U.S. users and is working to reach an agreement with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as Cfius, a federal panel that oversees cross-border mergers and acquisitions, that has been looking into the company.

“Our final agreement with the U.S. government will satisfy all national security concerns," she said. “As it relates to access and controls, we are going to go above and beyond."

Now Emily Baker-White and Iain Martin report in Forbes:

TikTok accounts run by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government have accumulated millions of followers and tens of millions of views, many of them on videos editorializing about U.S. politics without clear disclosure that they were posted by a foreign government.

The accounts are managed by MediaLinks TV, a registered foreign agent and Washington D.C.-based outpost of the main Chinese Communist Party television news outlet, China Central Television. The largest of them are @Pandaorama, which features cute videos about Chinese culture, @The…Optimist, which posts about sustainability, and @NewsTokss, which features coverage of U.S. national and international news...

TikTok has said it is developing a global policy to address content posted by state-controlled media outlets. In a statement, TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza told Forbes: “We plan to introduce our state-controlled media policy and corresponding labels globally next year as part of our continued focus on media literacy. As we previously confirmed, the global rollout will include China state media." Forbes previously reported that according to LinkedIn profiles, more than 300 employees at TikTok and ByteDance previously worked for Chinese state media.

At least until next year, when TikTok promises to roll out a new policy—and, one hopes, better disclosure—what is the business case for Apple and Alphabet to continue facilitating TikTok’s dominance of the video viewing of American teenagers? Both firms have said in a number of ways how much they value transparency for consumers of tech products.

Apple has described how it carefully selects apps, in contrast to the wild and woolly open Internet. Apple says it offers “a highly curated App Store where every app is reviewed by experts and an editorial team" and also that “we’re keeping an eye out for the kids."

This brings us to the question of how careful TikTok is with U.S. user data. Joel Thayer wrote an op-ed in the Journal in July and observed:

Leaked audio of TikTok’s internal meetings obtained by BuzzFeed contradicts the company’s sworn testimony to Congress last fall that U.S. user data is managed by a “world-renowned U.S.-based security team." BuzzFeed reports that American staff couldn’t access the data on their own and had to ask Chinese colleagues where user information was going. The China-based engineers had access to nonpublic U.S. user data at least from September 2021 to January 2022, according to BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed reports that “in the recordings, the vast majority of situations where China-based staff accessed US user data were in service" of halting the flow of American data to China. But the fact that Chinese engineers had this access presents a national-security risk. If a tech company operates in mainland China, the Communist Party can easily gain access to its data. One way is through China’s Data Security Law, which allows the government to regulate private companies’ practices for storing and managing information in China if they collect “core data"—a broad term that means anything Beijing sees as a national or security concern.

TikTok said shortly before the BuzzFeed story broke that its “default storage location" for U.S. users’ data would be routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. But if Chinese engineers can still access that content, they could easily store it in mainland servers, even unintentionally. The BuzzFeed report details a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety Department saying, in a fall 2021 meeting, that “everything is seen in China." Worse, an unidentified director referred to a “Master Admin" based in Beijing who had “access to everything" on the app.

(TikTok responded to the BuzzFeed report: “We know we’re among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data. That’s why we hire experts in their fields, continually work to validate our security standards, and bring in reputable, independent third parties to test our defenses." ByteDance, its parent company, didn’t provide additional comment.)

Apple’s website says:

Privacy is a fundamental human right. It’s also one of our core values. Which is why we design our products and services to protect it. That’s the kind of innovation we believe in.

There’s rarely been a better moment for Apple show its commitment to fundamental human rights. The Journal’s Liza Lin reports:

China’s internet watchdog instructed tech companies to expand censorship of protests and moved to curb access to virtual private networks this week, as a government clampdown succeeds in keeping most protesters off the streets after nationwide demonstrations erupted over the weekend against the country’s strict Covid policies.

The Cyberspace Administration of China issued guidance to companies on Tuesday, including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese owner of short video apps TikTok and Douyin, asking them to add more staff to internet-censorship teams, people familiar with the matter said. The companies were also asked to pay more attention to content related to the protests, particularly information about demonstrations at Chinese universities and a fire in the western Xinjiang region that triggered the backlash over Covid policies...The Cyberspace Administration of China and ByteDance didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Is there any evidence that ByteDance is doing anything at all to defy the communist regime that systematically assaults fundamental human rights?

No one is arguing that TikTok, which now completely dominates the U.S. social media landscape when it comes to the viewing habits of high school kids, is not a technological innovator. In fact its innovations likely make it especially intriguing for foreign state-controlled media looking to influence U.S. conversation. Ms. Bobrowsky and Journal colleagues Salvador Rodriguez, Sarah Needleman and Georgia Wells reported in November:

The way TikTok functioned was inherently different from other social media. Instead of showing users posts from friends and others they chose to follow, TikTok showed users videos from people they didn’t necessarily follow but that they might like. The algorithm learned what type of content each individual person wanted to see based on how much time they spent watching or lingering over specific videos. The more time users spent on the app, the better TikTok’s algorithm got at feeding them...

Some began to question the possible downsides of the algorithm’s power, which at times helped keep users on the app for hours a day and sometimes served them content that could be harmful. A Wall Street Journal investigation last year, for example, showed that TikTok’s algorithms were flooding teens’ For You pages with videos encouraging weight loss and disordered eating. (Days after the Journal brought its findings to TikTok, the app said it would tweak its recommendation algorithm to avoid showing users too much similar content.) A recent Pew survey found that two-thirds of teens say they use TikTok and nearly a fifth say they are on it “almost constantly."

Couldn’t U.S. teens possibly use other video services for a few months until TikTok delivers its promised changes and Apple and Google address the questions about transparency and privacy?

The Journal report in November noted:

TikTok said it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and that it wouldn’t if asked.

How exactly would a business in China say no to Xi Jinping?

 

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