With more than a billion users around the world, the Chinese-owned video app TikTok has become the most downloaded social network in the world by 2022, especially among the youngest. It is growing at a faster rate than any other, which makes it one of the jewels in the crown of the Asian giant’s digital empire. And as such, it is also seen by the West as one of its tools of influence and even interference. So much so that, last week, the White House announced that it was giving its federal agencies 30 days to remove the social network from all government electronic devices, alleging that the data collected by the application could fall into the hands of Beijing. .
They have not been the only ones. The list has not stopped growing since India was the pioneer in 2020. In December last year, Taiwan made the same decision, and at the end of February, the European Commission asked employees to delete the app from corporate devices, as well as personal devices that use corporate apps. Following the US decision – where many government agencies had already banned it – the Government of Canada announced that it was taking the same measure, as did the Parliament of Denmark, which asked deputies and employees to delete the application from work devices for “espionage risk”.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has invested heavily in defending our nation’s digital infrastructure and limiting foreign adversaries’ access to Americans’ data,” said Chris DeRusha, US Federal Director of Information Security. Joined. Canadian Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said Canada’s chief information officer had determined that TikTok “presents an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.” A Republican bill that would give Biden authorization to ban TikTok in the US advances in the House of Representatives.
There are fears that Bytedance, the company that owns TikTok, will share the data it collects from its users with the Chinese government. A law put in place in 2017 obliges companies to give the authorities any personal data relevant to national security. The company ensures that the data of US users is stored in Virginia and Singapore, so they would not be subject to this legislation. But red flags were raised in December when ByteDance announced it had fired four employees for accessing the data of two Buzzfeed and Financial Times journalists while trying to trace the source of a leaked report on the company.
However, in a 2021 study, the University of Toronto organization Citizen Lab found that TikTok and Facebook collect similar amounts of user data, including device identifiers that can be used to track a user and information that can reconstruct the behavior of a user on different platforms. If what Western governments are concerned about is the excessive collection of data by tech giants and their use of it, there have been numerous examples in recent years of how US-owned platforms like Facebook or YouTube have been used to influence electoral results, from Brexit to the election of Trump or Bolsonaro. From Cambridge Analytica to Equipo Jorge, a myriad of opaque companies are dedicated to exploiting the data obtained from social networks – with greater or lesser consent on their part – to manipulate the minds of their users in the service of the highest bidder.
“All social networks extract user data in a brutal way,” says Simona Levi, one of the founders of Xnet, a platform in defense of digital rights. “All US technology corporations have agreements with the Government on access to this data in the cases they consider, which depends on how democratic that Government is. TikTok, being Chinese, has exactly the same agreement with its government, ”explains Levi. The activist maintains that behind the concern of the West there is a reason for geopolitical security – “or depending on how you look at it, for population control”, she points out – but there are also economic motivations, for market share: “If you make it difficult to use of TikTok in the western market, you favor that your companies occupy that space”.
“We know from Snowden that the CIA spied on Angela Merkel long before TikTok. As a citizen, I feel just as insecure if my data reaches the hands of the US or China”, reflects Susana Pérez, professor of digital journalism at Ramon Llull University. “This debate only demonstrates the hypocrisy. The United States is trying to put a stop to a social network that comes from a country that could take away its position as a world leader, ”she continues.
Beyond the clash between powers, citizens have few tools to remain on the sidelines. “We have no alternative. It is very easy for someone from Silicon Valley to say that he will live offline and that his children will go to schools without tablets, but the rest of us need technology companies to survive. And we are much more tied to the Americans than to the Chinese ones”, points out Pérez. The war for data began a long time ago, now it is a question of choosing a trench.
