The TikTok Conundrum: Algorithmic Allure, National Security, and Private Sector Relations
Many things make ByteDance’s app TikTok appealing: its nouveau interface, attention-grabbing videos, and distinguishing infinite scroll. Even in 2023, few apps receive close to the same traffic. With a primarily young audience, users on the app spend, on average, 95 minutes per day scrolling through or creating their own videos (Doyle 2023). This is almost double the time spent on Meta’s Instagram or Facebook and more than the combined time spent on Twitter and Snapchat. While the algorithm and infinite scroll are renowned propellers of the app’s magnetism, TikTok is unique in more ways than one. Its musical and artistic influence situates the app culturally in tune, generating daily viral trends. Videos from TikTok filter into a positive feedback loop: users construct a trend, reinforce it through engagement, and watch as the videos exponentially increase in reshares, remixes, and revamps. With the massive reach and societal impact of TikTok, owned by a significant overseas competitor, many are right to be distrustful. However, to answer the pressing questions of TikToks placement in the social media space and juxtaposition to China’s data access, we must first discern the origin of this concern and how this issue has populated today. In the coming months, The United States government will have to make an unprecedented decision on whether to ban a foreign social media app, in what would be a first in the country’s history.
The Basis of TikTok
Unlike most social media companies, Tiktok has a streamlined design, making the entire experience seamless from when one opens the app to when they close it. Users face only a few decisions: stay on the current video or scroll to the next one. Different from other apps, there is no requirement to follow or seek out specific users. This is because the algorithm is not built on a social graph like Instagram or Facebook. On TikTok, the network of people you follow has little to do with how content is curated to its users. Instead, the videos are built on an interest graph, displaying content users desire based on their interactions with the videos shown to them before (Nayal 2011). In this way, videos are treated with some unilateral respect: content can come from any user and expand solely based on user interaction. Because of each video's short length, the expansion is rapid, even more so than interest graph platforms like YouTube. There are more extremely accessible videos in a shorter time than any other platform of its kind. From a national security and data-conscious observers’ standpoint, this is a nightmare: more videos, more interaction, and more points of data for ByteDance to collect.
TikToks' global appeal is massive. The app is not hyperfocused on a particular language or culture but instead on music, dance, and art–features that evade international boundaries. This is seen in the rapid growth TikTok has achieved as a flourishing Chinese social media company on foreign soil. Because of its origins, the rules and regulations of ByteDance’s subsidiaries innately differ from most democratic nations' standards. The Chinese government is an infamous proponent of controversial and predatory practices, including human rights abuses and violations of international sovereignty. The rise of these events has continued to forge contentious relations between China and the U.S., further intensifying the diplomatic finagling of the two countries. It is explicitly written in Chinese law that the government can demand access to information about users on a Chinese-owned application for the sake of national security purposes. According to NBC, “Two pieces of legislation are of particular concern to [the United States] government: the 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law” (2019). Specifically, these laws state that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law” (Kharpal 2019). According to the 2014 Counter-Espionage law, “when the state security organ investigates and understands the situation of espionage and collects relevant evidence, the relevant organizations and individuals shall provide it truthfully and may not refuse” (Kharpal 2019). In other words, if China enforces this law, ByteDance will have no choice but to give up user data. There is just one problem: The U.S. government has a strong dislike for the word “if,” because in national security speak, “if” means a probability, and, in this case, a risk that the U.S. cannot afford to take.
ByteDance Data Collection Methods
TikTok collects a significant amount of algorithmic data from published and unpublished content, such as likes, comments, and messages. Some of this data, like time spent on videos, directly impacts the videos which appear in one’s feed. The user’s imputed data include age, phone number, email address, and name–additionally, GIS data and IP addresses are used to approximate the locations of users’ devices. The privacy policy includes a few subtle yet significant stipulations, including permitting keystroke tracking and collection of “biometric information” (Hetrick 2022). TikTok claims that this data is not stored in the same solidified or permanent way as input data or information collected by the algorithm. However, the ambiguity and ostensive lack of control worry many in the intelligence community. FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress in March that the “Chinese Communist Party operates with no line between the private and public sector” (Tarinelli 2023). Beyond forced and illegal data collection by a foreign government, another concern for the U.S. government is the ability of any nation or administration to step in and control a social platform. In the eyes of national security, a country controlling a massive media company compromises data stored on the app, one's phone overall, and the feed algorithm. While the potential for mass propaganda controlled by China via TikTok is largely speculation, the company's fuzzy privacy policy does not fully address TikTok's conceivable misuse of users’ data even outside of the app.
TikTok in China
TikTok as an app is not offered in China. Instead, Chinese users have access to ByteDance company Douyin, an app that laid the groundwork for its successor. This divide encroaches on the fabric of the global internet, with factions sectioned off to citizens per countries' domestic policies. But former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, disagrees: “I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America” (Morgus et a.l 2018). This sentiment echoes concerns about communication rights, propaganda, and access to information on a network divided into factions. With existing heavily focused censorship within China, “social media would arguably allow for more freedom of expression” (Yu 2021). Even with Douyin, users, like teenagers, are subject to strict time limits–dictating the hours of the day they can use the app and for how long (Yeung and Wang 2023). This culminates in two major points of concern. The first is the Chinese government, the overall chief authority of TikTok, prohibiting the Chinese-made app on their own soil. Second, the conclusion is that a country with unyielding censorship and control over its citizens, fearless of red tape, could be willing to cross the line regarding data collection to gain a strategic advantage politically, economically, and internationally.
Traditionally, the United States has operated with little government involvement on social platforms. The Chinese government actively participates in the curation, use, and proliferation of social media, distinguishing it from other countries on the autonomous side of the social spectrum. TikTok, as a subsidiary of ByteDance, has recently tried to distance itself from its parent company. The Trump administration led efforts to transfer ownership of TikTok to U.S.-based company Oracle, but these plans never materialized (Allyn 2023b). In 2020, India banned TikTok, claiming that it and other Chinese-owned apps were sending collected user data abroad (Maheshwari and Holpuch, 2023). As of February 27, 2023, all federal agencies in the United States were ordered to remove TikTok from their phones (ibid.). Moreover, on March 3rd, 2023, TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, was interviewed over a five-hour session in Congress (ibid.). During the hearing, Chew referred to Project Texas, a plan for TikTok to house “functions of [the] business that are most likely to give rise to national security concerns” in a U.S.-based subsidiary (Perault and Sacks 2023). TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. (USDS) was created in July of 2022 for this exact purpose. With Oracle monitoring data entry and exit, as well as an independent board of directors governing the firm, TikTok hopes to secure congressional approval and regain the trust of the U.S. government by transferring control to them (Kang, Maheshwari, and McCabe 2023). But while alternatives are discussed, the Biden administration has voiced its stance: preferring ownership to be terminated, transferred, or face elimination as a company operating in U.S. markets (Allyn 2023a).
TikTok executives like Chew have repeatedly claimed that ByteDance and its subsidies are not “agents of China” (Allyn 2023b). Yet, Congress argues that Chinese data request laws put ByteDance in a compromised position. Moreover, data leaks within ByteDance have ensued before, granting outside parties access to U.S. citizens’ online data. In the summer of 2022, four employees within the firm leaked data about a small number of U.S. users, including two journalists (Kang 2022). The four perpetrators, two based in China and two in the U.S., were fired afterward. Perhaps the fear of foreign adversaries and the media collecting mass data and information on citizens drives the motivation to shut TikTok down.
Privacy in the U.S.
Most Americans believe they are being tracked or included in data collection through their personal media or technology daily. Despite the need for further trust in these companies to use our data responsibly, the U.S. remains one of the largest technology-consuming countries in the world. Over 60% of adults have a distrust and feel a lack of control of their data in the hands of both companies and, ironically, the government (Auxier et al. 2019). Most adults in America also agree that the risk of using technology outweighs the benefits. But while this survey data shows that we all like to think we value privacy, many pivot elsewhere, adopting a willfully ignorant attitude to how data collection may affect them. This is the market price one pays for using popular technology and media. Counter arguments from those who believe this is an oversimplification, reducing millennials to a privacy-neglecting generation, do not quite appreciate the choice between privacy and connectivity. This is most obviously seen in the poll of Americans who support a ban on TikTok when looking at age demographics. In a study conducted by Pew Research, nearly 50% of Gen Z Americans oppose a ban on TikTok and over 50% of those older than Gen Z support one (Silver and Clancy 2023). Additionally, that number rises to over 70% when polling those 65 and older, further showing the growing generation disparity. This simplifies to the majority of Americans supporting a ban on TikTok, but the younger generation, the primary users of TikTok, remain in opposition (ibid.).
One can fairly assume Americans, in general, have a distrust in the handling of their data. Yet, users utilize multiple forms of media, consciously agree to privacy policies that explicitly stipulate mass data collection, and understand the existence of government intervention with a duty to protect user information. This brings into question if it is really the people, in general, that a ban on TikTok would protect. If Americans already believe that their privacy is breached by the media they use, then the grounds for prohibiting TikTok would have to be supported by a threat that surpasses data collection, storage, or even manipulation. After all, the world of business knows no borders, and selling data does not discriminate based on the origin country of the company. This was seen in 2014 when Cambridge Analytica accessed millions of Facebook users’ profile data. Cambridge Analytica was then in “contact with Lukoil, a Russian oil giant” (Confessore 2018). This data breach was a clear indicator of the value of American user information and the danger of that information being in the hands of foreign adversaries.
Looking ahead
It is evident that there are different implications when it comes to TikTok. The fear from legislators may not be that TikTok as an entity would collect or sell data. As established earlier, data collection and selling have already been reconciled by users. Rather, the fear is perhaps absolute governmental control over a private firm, facilitated by domestic laws of China, which allow access to specific user data, combined with the loose and shady privacy policy granting access to critical identifying components of users’ broader information on devices. Personal privacy and national security can overlap but are, in sum, very different issues.
Through the noise of political ramblings and rhetoric, the fundamental issue here is a differentiation between how the government and private sector can operate and where. The nature of ByteDance’s origin country, its past actions, stance on media, and domestic law and operation structure focused on control, is in sharp contrast to that of the United States. Under these conditions, a strong case exists for barring any Chinese-owned or based app that courts U.S. users. A ban would draw a clear line in the sand: the threat of foreign governments interacting unlawfully with U.S. citizens is significant and must be dealt with, even if only preventative. Perhaps this is the distinction Americans need to hear. While users may struggle to understand the nuanced boundaries of national security, the mere separation of TikTok from another data collection breach will be critical in rallying users to support legislation against it. Hopefully, this unprecedented time will catalyze self-reflection and contemplation, where we as citizens fully appreciate the contemporary epoch of surveillance, authority, and choice.
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