Dubbed “the defining social media app of Gen Z,” TikTok has entrapped many young users with a facade of quirkiness and creativity. This facade conceals a covert network of private data collection and political censorship on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Social media companies’ data farming is nothing new, but TikTok’s data collecting practices have surpassed even the considerable infringements of Zuckerberg’s empire. This app, which is widely used by children and teenagers, collects an array of biometric data on its users including “face prints, voice prints, geolocation information, browsing and search history, not just on TikTok but on other apps.”
TikTok stores the data which it collects and, under their privacy policy, is allowed to share all data with its parent company ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. This represents a grave threat to users’ privacy. The Chinese Communist Party exerts considerable influence over ByteDance, having obtained both a board seat and an ownership stake in ByteDance in 2021.While TikTok has vowed that they would never share users’ data with the CCP, a 2017 Chinese law would require them to do just that if asked. In light of this, it is hard to see how TikTok could possibly deliver on their promise. When pressed on these security concerns by Senator Marsha Blackburn during a 2021 hearing, TikTok’s Head of Public Policy Michael Beckerman gave an evasive answer, “citing a report that indicates TikTok does not share user data directly with the Chinese government,” but refused to tell Senator Blackburn whether or not TikTok shares their data with ByteDance. Beckerman’s answer suggests that TikTok does (indirectly) share user data with the Chinese government.
TikTok’s censorship practices on its platform are equally disturbing. In 2019, a leak revealed documents ordering TikTok moderators to censor content related topics such as “the Communist Party of China: Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, and the religious group Falun Gong.” In response to this and other growing concerns about political censorship on TikTok, the company announced in March 2020 that it would stop using China-based moderators to censor content on their platform. This decision was intended to reduce the chances of the CCP influencing censorship on TikTok and prevent them from accessing TikTok’s stored data–but whether or not this measure is actually effective is debatable. The decision did not sufficiently assuage lawmakers, and later that year a bill was introduced to remove TikTok from government phones. The bill was unanimously passed by the Senate, but never received a vote in the House. Since then, the CCP has faced little opposition towards their censorship practices. Our politicians are allowing the Chinese government to choose the content being fed into the minds of American children and teenagers while collecting troves of data they can use to more successfully manipulate the American public.
Senator Marsha Blackburn rightly accused TikTok, which is marketed as a harmless entertainment app, of “making [our children and their data] the product,”.The tech giant has a purpose that makes Facebook look ethical: spying on Americans for the Chinese government. It is clear TikTok’s omnipresence in America represents a serious threat to national security. We must make it clear to our elected officials they must enact legislation to address this threat. Even before our legislators take action, we can protect ourselves by deleting TikTok and convincing others to do the same.
For anyone reluctant to delete TikTok, here’s a question: Do you really want to get your entertainment by giving your internet history, location information, and unique biological data to a genocidal regime so it can use those tools to track, repress, and murder its Uyghur minority more quickly?