To Restrict TikTok: a Necessary Evil or a Trojan Horse?
TikTok enables people to express themselves and sample popular Internet culture. While the company has strong ties to the Chinese government, the U.S. government has made a powergrab of their own.
Introduction
TikTok has emerged as the latest playground for people to express themselves and sample popular Internet culture. The app offers an easy way for everyone, from parents to teens to businesses, to become content creators. Part of the appeal is that it offers quick bursts of emotional satisfaction, bite-sized information and a sense of community. In other words, it is the perfect entertainment medium in an age of Internet addiction where many of us have diminishing attention spans. But are the concerns about data privacy, neural chemistry and political propaganda founded? Is the US Senate’s response, in the form of the Restrict Act, another breach of freedom entirely?
The Rise of TikTok
TikTok’s number of users has grown at an astonishing rate, more than doubling in just a year time.
It’s not just a bunch of casual users, either. A study by the University of Trinidad and Tobago concluded that although the majority of users (68.2 percent) in its sample were classified as having “no risk” of TikTok addiction, 25.4 percent of them were seen as being at “low risk,” and 6.4 per cent as being “at-risk.” Part of this uptick in problematic usage is due to lockdown, where many downloaded the app and have been using it on a daily basis since then. But what is it it that makes TikTok so compulsive, making millions of people swipe from one clip to the next for hours of the day, even post-lockdown?
Under the hood of the app is a powerful recommendation algorithm. It offers a feed of content curated for your individual profile, based on your age and other demographic factors. Videos are also ranked based on factors such as the number of likes, shares and comments for a video. It also makes use of concepts like “trending sounds”, which promote videos based on particular sounds present that seem to attract a certain user. This algorithm, paired with content that promotes short, simple narratives or emotionally punchy snippets, provides a recipe for an entertainment form that has endless material to consume.
The owners of TikTok are called ByteDance. They are a big tech company with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The company’s vice president serves as the CCP Committee Secretary. The company is also partially owned by the Chinese state, through a ‘golden share’ investment, which gives them the ability to outvote other shareholders. This reveals a conflict of interest, and may change how TikTok is used on the global population. In one case, social media influencers pushing propaganda, who receive the bulk of attention on TikTok for their content. A research report from Miburo, a firm analyzing foreign disinformation operations, found that “At least 200 influencers with connections to the Chinese government or its state media are operating in 38 different languages." Taking a leg up on Russian bots, it would appear the Chinese government is leveraging actual personalities to push their agenda, as many of these influencers promote everything from tourist attractions in Mainland China, to anti-Taiwan and anti-Ukraine messaging straight from the CCP’s state-controlled media.
TikTok’s Data Protection Violations
The privacy policy on TikTok’s website gives a pretty clear outline of what kind of data it collects on its users: geographic data, keystroke patterns and biometric information such as voices and faces. While TikTok claims its data from American users goes through Oracle’s (an American-based company) servers, the fact remains that is backs up its data elsewhere. It’s unclear exactly which data is actually being shared with unauthorized or undesirable parties.
TikTok has confirmed that employees based in China are able to access U.S. user data through "approval protocols”. Meanwhile, in the UK, the nation’s data regulator fined TikTok £12.7 million for several breaches of data usage. The main one was the processing of 1.4 million children’s data, under 13, who were using the app without parental consent. Similarly, in 2019, TikTok was fined $5.7 million by the US Federal Trade Commission for improper data collection from children under 13. The company has pulled data from multiple journalists (from the likes of the Financial Times, Forbes and more). This was because these same journalists shared information that had been leaked from the company. It is alarming to think that one company could determine the location of someone without their knowledge or consent, but this is nothing new when it comes to the likes of big tech companies from the West, including Facebook and Google.
This issue is not exclusive to the US and the UK. Already, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway and Italy have also started to restrict TikTok usage, by preventing government employees from using the app on their work devices. In Rome, Italy's antitrust authority announced an investigation into the app due to the publication of ‘dangerous content’. But no one is moving as energetically against TikTok as the US government.
During the Trump administration, the government tried to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to American corporations (Oracle and Walmart), likely to circumvent many of these issues. This fell through, and since then, there has been a steady build-up of tension, with the US government navigating these uncharted waters for regulating an app like TikTok.
In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a letter, calling on Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, citing “TikTok’s pattern of conduct and misrepresentations regarding the unfettered access that persons in Beijing have to sensitive U.S. user data”.
On March 23rd 2022, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before the US Congress. Naturally, he denied that the app shares data inappropriately or that it has any connections to the Chinese government. Chew claimed that American data is stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel. All the lawmakers present, whether Democrat or Republican, criticized TikTok and chastised Chew’s evasive answers. Part of the response to the TikTok issue by the US Senate has been the Restrict Act, which has received backlash due to its extremist and possibly irrelevant measures to “protect data privacy”.
The RESTRICT Act
The RESTRICT Act was introduced into the United States Senate in March 2023, by Senator Mark Warner. It is described as "a systematic framework for addressing technology-based threats to the security and safety of Americans.” But this is a surface-level interpretation of the Act, which has further reaching implications than just the safety of American citizens.
Known as S 686, the RESTRICT Act, dubbed in the Senate as the “TikTok bill,” has 21 bipartisan co-sponsors, with an endorsement by the Biden administration. Effectively, the bill gives the executive branch of the government national security powers, to monitor, control and restrict commerce in information and communication technologies (ICTS). This term, ICTS, is an umbrella term for computer devices and software.
The Act states that the Secretary of Commerce be given the power to “review business transactions involving certain information and communications technologies (ICTS) products or services” when they are connected to a "foreign adversary" of the United States, and pose an "undue and unacceptable risk" to the national security of the United States or its citizens. Examples of undue and unacceptable risk include, among other things:
Impact to the country's critical infrastructure and digital economy,
"Sabotage or subversion" of ICTS in the United States
Interference and manipulation of federal elections
Undermining the democratic process to "steer policy and regulatory decisions in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national security of the United States".
The Act classifies China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Cuba, Iran, Russia, and the Nicolás Maduro regime of Venezuela as foreign adversaries. It applies to ICTS entities that are held in whole or in part by, or otherwise fall under the jurisdiction of a country or government. It’s not clear if TikTok is ‘owned’ by Americans. If anyone violates the Act, the civil penalty could be a fine of up to $250,000, or "twice the value of the transaction that is the basis of the violation with respect to which the penalty is imposed", whichever is greater, and criminal penalties of up to $1 million and up to 20 years imprisonment.
It seems like there could be some benefit to controlling TikTok through this Act, so why has it received such significant backlash and criticism from the general public? The Act is quite vague in its implications, and its reach is wide. It’s not just apps like TikTok that get regulated, but any kind of software or computational device, your personal smartphone, your electronic doorbell, your chat history on a computer from a public library. It should be noted that software is only targeted under this Act if it has a user base exceeding 1 million in the U.S and has ties to one of the foreign adversaries, listed earlier in this section of the newsletter. But if such a tie is found, even minimally, the Act could enable the government to censor or outright ban the ICTS used in conjunction with the adversarial party.
You might be wondering how the proposed TikTok ban fits into this. It seems the Act only vaguely addresses the issue of TikTok. All it does is grant the Commerce Department of the US. broad authority, allowing them to remove it from app stores or force a sale, something other government authorities have attempted before. Going further, it actually grants this department a tonne of power, allowing them to apply any measures they see fit to deal with the TikTok issue, without any restrictions on what those measures might be. ague enforcement provision that grants the power to broadly punish any person who “evades” these undefined “mitigation measures,” and the result is a law that can be read as criminalizing common practices like using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to get a prohibited app, side-loaded installations, or using an app that was lawfully downloaded somewhere else. It could also enable the US. government to get access to user data from TikTok servers, which is the exact problem the Bill was made to address in the first place. This brings to mind the Patriot Act signed in 2001.
Pariot Act
The Patriot Act, which was established in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, aimed to bolster national security in the United States, especially in regards to foreign terrorism. The act consisted of three key provisions: the expansion of law enforcement surveillance powers to include domestic and international phone tapping, improved interagency communication to enhance counterterrorism efforts, and stricter penalties for terrorism crimes with an expanded list of qualifying activities. It also led to the authorization of the indefinite detention of immigrants without trial and the allowance for law enforcement to conduct property and record searches without a warrant, consent, or knowledge (although a warrant or consent is generally required for such searches). Multiple legal challenges have been brought against the act since its passage, and numerous provisions have been deemed unconstitutional by federal courts. There is also the risk of loss in financial freedom, when it comes to another recent law, the Data Act.
Data Act
In 2014, the American Congress signed the DATA Act. aimed to improve the transparency and accessibility of federal spending data. It requires federal agencies to publish spending data online in a standardized format, allowing citizens to track how their tax dollars are being spent. Controversial responses to the Data Act have largely focused on concerns over privacy and government surveillance. Section 102 of the bill could result in U.S. citizens who knowingly transferred sensitive personal information to any entity owned by or influenced by China being banned from conducting any U.S. financial transactions. The definition of "sensitive personal information" is so broad that it could include something as simple as forwarding emails or sharing health insurance information with a company that has partial Chinese ownership. Title II of the bill would require the U.S. government to freeze all U.S. assets of a foreign person anywhere in the world who is involved in a Chinese-owned software application that facilitates Chinese military, surveillance, or censorship activities. This broad prohibition, with extreme penalties, could lead to the U.S. government trying to ban the use of much Chinese software anywhere in the world.
Conclusion
As we look toward the near future, it is essential to consider the impact of such legislation on our digital freedoms and privacy. While it is crucial to protect citizens from potential threats, it is equally important to strike a balance between security and individual rights. The case of TikTok and the RESTRICT Act demonstrates the complexities of regulating technology in an increasingly interconnected world. It is vital for governments, technology companies, and citizens to engage in open, informed conversations about the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies and their effects on our lives.
Read on to learn more about how the government uses AI in surveillance technology.