Georgia L Gilholy is a Young Voices UK contributor.
“Michelle Donelan, the Technology Minister, has put her proverbial foot down. Washington and Brussels may be poised to bar their government officials from using TikTok on work devices, but Britain will not be following in their tracks without “significant evidence” that theirs’ is the correct route.
But there is already plenty of evidence TikTok is violating people’s privacy and is potentially a national security risk.”
Last August, Parliament swiftly took down its TikTok profile days after creating it when scores of MPs complained about the risks to data. Why did they feel this action was necessary for their own account, but not for individual MPs and their staff?
Successive investigations have concluded that TikTok is a very real threat to privacy. While, as Donelan explained, the firm claims it only stores user information in the US and Singapore, this is far from the full story.
Under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, all China-based organisations and citizens are mandated to “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence. There is no suggestion that TikTok’s parent company has made any stand against this requirement, and thus British authorities should operate on the assumption that it is cooperating with Beijing’s stringent edicts on these matters.
This law, and links with the despotic CCP and its People’s Liberation Army, were partly behind the blacklisting in Washington of Huawei and ZTE as “national security threats”. These facts no doubt played a part in the rescinding of the former’s role in the UK’s 5G infrastructure. Why should TikTok be given the benefit of the doubt?
The app has also been complicit in a slew of worrying content. A 2019 British report concluded that one-quarter of the children sampled had live-streamed with a user they had never met in person on the Chinese video app, while one in twenty of them had received a request to remove their clothes.
Meanwhile a 2020 BBC investigation uncovered hundreds of vile sexual remarks publicly posted in the comment section of TikTok videos uploaded by minors.
Precarious monitoring policies have stoked panics about various social media platforms, but it is all more worrying in TikTok’s case given its overwhelmingly young user base.
There are also worries the app is deliberately attempting to “dumb down” overseas youth. While the Chinese version of the app (Douyin), also owned by Beijing-based conglomerate (ByteDance), recommends science and history videos to children, Western users are bombarded with tarot card readings, dance trends, and energy drink promos.
Political propaganda is also a serious threat. Internal documents leaked to the Guardian in 2019 contained evidence that the platform’s in-house moderators were instructed to censor content that referred to the Tiananmen Square massacre and Tibetan independence – topics of close interest to the Chinese state.
Western observers are justifiably concerned that the platform could offer users a warped view of history, one which promotes the CCP’s authoritarian stance far beyond China’s borders.
Donelan’s failure to target TikTok’s presence on any government devices, or even voice a note of caution, either suggests she is badly misinformed on the nature of the app or is exhibiting the persistent strain of naivety regarding the corporations of hostile states such as China from which the British establishment has long suffered
Naturally, TikTok has repeatedly assured punters, politicians, and hacks that safety is its number one priority, and denied being a risk to security or society. But why would any government minister worth their salt take a firm with links to the Chinese Communist Party at its word?
If the Conservatives were serious at all about fortifying the British state, not to mention grassroots culture, they would think hard about the harm presented by TikTok. Instead, we have a government that like many before it, is quick to employ harsh words but rarely follows up its complaints with action.
Britain does not have the resources nor the duty to meddle in every international crisis, but in our domestic affairs on simple matters of government security, we are failing of our own volition.