The crisis surrounding TikTok is intensifying internationally after Britain banned it from official government agencies, concurrently with similar restrictions imposed by Canada, the European Union, and the United States. This is true despite ByteDance, the app’s owner, making an effort to keep user data in the US and EU separate from its international operations and to reaffirm the confidentiality of user data while also denying giving that data to the Chinese government.
A Global Trend
Similar to how it has dealt with other social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp, China has placed severe restrictions on the TikTok app. For users under the age of 14, a special app called Douyin was launched, which can only be used for 40 minutes per day between the hours of 6 am and 10 pm. An increasing number of countries (primarily the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, New Zealand, and a number of European Union countries) have taken steps to ban the application on computers and devices belonging to various government institutions due to national security concerns. It has been estimated that as many as 24 countries have taken such action, though many others have taken a blanket stance against TikTok.
The European Parliament confirmed that the application’s ban and removal from government-owned devices went into effect on 20 March 2023, and advised that its members and staff do the same for their own personal devices. On security and data protection grounds, the European Commission and European Parliament both tended to veto the app. In this regard, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, affirmed that all EU member states would implement a total ban on application in order to protect the privacy of their citizens.
Further, the Norwegian Parliament has outlawed downloading the app on devices with access to the electronic system used by the parliament, and the Swedish army has similarly blocked downloads of the app on devices of the military personnel. France forbade public sector workers from installing entertainment apps like TikTok, Twitter, Netflix, and other apps like Candy Crush on their work phones. Britain has banned the app and is also conducting a thorough review of the access that it and other platforms have to sensitive government data.
India banned WeChat and TikTok in June 2020 due to their potential security risks, particularly in light of its renewed direct military conflict with China. Despite this, Forbes has confirmed that TikTok can still collect private user information, such as locations, contacts, search histories, and more, even though India has banned it. Both Pakistan and Taiwan have taken the same tack, issuing warnings to TikTok users about the app’s immoral content. Afghanistan’s decision was made after the Taliban movement seized control of the country. That said, on four separate occasions, Pakistan temporarily banned the app due to concerns that it spreads unethical content.
The Canadian government has also taken issue with TikTok, arguing that its use has reached an unacceptable level. Therefore, employees were no longer permitted to download it from app stores. This decision went into effect on 20 March 2023, and government employees are now obligated to uninstall the app from the mobiles. In other words, the Canadian government forbade the app from being downloaded on any of its phones or devices, and said it might prevent users from doing so in the future because it poses an unacceptable risk to users’ security and privacy, especially given that its data collection method gives third parties access to all users’ phones. While there was no indication of a government data breach, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada opened a thorough investigation into how much personal information the app was able to collect from users and how much of an impact China had on the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
US Position on TikTok
On 27 February 2023, the White House issued a deadline for federal agencies to remove TikTok from all federal government devices and systems within a month and mandated that these agencies amend IT contracts to require that contractors stop using the app on devices and systems used in the course of their work to protect US data.
In accordance with a memo from the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, the federal government’s agencies and departments have been instructed to remove and disallow installations of the application on IT owned or operated by agencies and prohibit internet traffic from IT owned by agencies to a covered application.
In spite of criticism that this infringes on freedom of expression, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved an act in early March 2023 that gives Biden the power to ban TikTok without having to wait for the review of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. This act, also known as the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries Act, updates a law from the 1980s that forbids the government from imposing barriers to the free flow of visual entertainment between foreign countries. In general, the new law mandates bans on businesses that knowingly hand over user data like that which TikTok collects to any foreign person associated with the Chinese Communist Party.
This action was taken in response to numerous statements made by officials warning of TikTok’s security risks, such as those made by the Director of the Office of Federal Investigations Christopher Ray and the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCall, who both confirmed the need for this law to outlaw any software applications that pose a threat to US national security, as well statements made by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, who criticized the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, for saying that the app does not spy on users.
Relatedly, on 27 March 2023, Biden issued a proclamation barring all branches and agencies of the US government from utilizing commercial malicious software that poses serious security risks to the country, especially in light of the growing reliance of foreign governments on such software for repressive and human rights-violating purposes, on the one hand, and the rising prevalence of spyware that targets the safety of American workers and their families, on the other. This presidential proclamation is issued within the context of the second edition of the Summit for Democracy, a virtual summit organized by the United States.
In addition to preventing members of the House of Representatives, the army, the marines, the air force, and the coast guard from downloading TikTok on their personal phones, there were calls for the owners of TikTok to sell it or face the risk of being banned, despite the app’s growing user base of over 150 million Americans, including 5 million businesses. This can occur by requesting that the US government remove the app from its platforms, making it unavailable for download from app stores but still usable on the phones of those who downloaded it before the ban went into effect until it stops receiving new updates. This does not, however, eliminate the loud voices that are doubtful about how difficult this will be, as it may cause widespread resentment among some users, particularly teenagers and young adults, who view the application as a source of income and a component of their identities.
Why This Ban on TikTok?
Concerns of various countries regarding TikTok include its use for espionage, the violation of users’ privacy, the collection of intelligence data about them for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party, and the increasing possibility of making data of these users available to the Chinese government due to the interdependence of the company that owns it and Chinese intelligence, as well as the multiplicity of security risks posed by the application on the the national security of many countries, the national laws that require Chinese businesses to provide the data requested by the Chinese government, which it may use to disseminate false information, and ByteDance’s admission that some employees in China have access to European users’ data.
Data has undeniably become the oil of the twenty-first century, and since it is the most valuable resource in the economy, concerns have been raised about what will happen to the personal information that TikTok collects (e.g. location, user activity, email, type of electronic device used, other applications on their devices, and so on). This is getting riskier and riskier as TikTok’s algorithm monitors what users watch and how long they spend watching each video in order to figure out which content they prefer by analyzing their viewing habits. Some claimed that this is done for marketing purposes, while others pushed for the possibility of selling the data to other governments. This in turn raised security concerns, which prompted many countries to look into how much data the application was able to gather in order to determine their potential fate.
Findings of the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Department of Justice should not be undervalued, as they confirm that the app violates children’s privacy laws and should be prohibited at home. Several years ago, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to investigate why Tiktok didn’t delete the videos and personal information of users under the age of 13. With the increase in young app users, some countries, including India, Brazil, and some Arab countries, have argued that teenagers and young adults are exposed to some inappropriate videos that go against societal norms.
In this vein, the severity of some challenges promoted by TikTok shouldn’t be overlooked, as many of them resulted in severe injuries. For instance, some users died after participating in the Kiki challenge and dancing in front of their cars, and one British woman broke her ankle while participating in the Oh Nanana challenge and needed surgery. A challenge involving eating candy with a very hot substance inside poisoned at least 57 students in a secondary school in Mexico, and the Skullbreaker challenge resulted in severe injuries, including concussions, paralysis, and death.
However, it should be noted that some Middle Eastern and South Asian countries have different concerns, such as Jordan, which outlawed TikTok after users posted videos encouraging violence and disorder during the protests against high fuel prices in December 2022, or India which banned TikTok due to the escalating Sino-Indian tensions on the one hand, and the worries of some European countries and the United States on the other. On the other side, the main security concerns that the US and Europe have stem from the potential Chinese government influence over the app, especially after it was discovered that the app had collected data on some Western journalists. The application’s ability to track these journalists’ locations and determine the type of information they consume confirmed that many of the concerns of Western countries are legitimate. This could be attributed to the fact that using the application allows it to recognize users’ locations, the contents of their searches, and their top preferences.
Implications and Repercussions
Despite a plethora of justifications and fears that are exacerbated by the fact that many countries lack a law that guarantees the protection of the privacy of national data and user systems, some countries led by the United States, are forced to choose between addressing their security concerns on the one hand, and satisfying the requirements of freedom of opinion and expression and appeasing the millennial and Zed generations on the other. It is undeniable that millennials (those between the ages of 27 and 42) are less connected to and use TikTok than Zeds (those between the ages of 18 and 26). The latter considers TikTok to be nothing more than a platform for original challenges, a means of commercial collaboration between users and well-known brands, and a source of entertainment and financial gain.
According to a SocialSphere survey done on 1,607 registered voters between the ages of 18 and 42 on 22 March 2023, millennials favor banning the app in the US by a margin of 34 to 49 percent, seeing that the app is being used for data collection, promoting Chinese propaganda, and spreading false information. However, between 35 percent and 45 percent of Zeds were against the ban. It was also discovered that a majority of Zed (66 percent) and Millennial voters (46 percent) have a favorable opinion of the app.
This poll provide insight into the consequences of banning the app, which may include a violent backlash from young users and civil rights groups in the United States, as well as possible and decisive reactions from China in response to the American ban, since some analyses have suggested that the American position on the app is nothing more than a new episode of the technological cold war between the two countries, as a result of which the application has become the focal point of the political conflict between the two countries, especially since the efforts of the US administration center to force China to sell the application, which may undermine the confidence of investors globally, with advertisers, activities, and various commercial companies being impacted and potentially facing huge losses.
This may prompt China to adopt comparable policies against the various technological companies operating on its soil. The effects could be felt by US technology firms, including Oracle, one of whose biggest clients is ByteDance, and Apple, the industry titan that produces the majority of its phones and devices in China (although it has relocated some production lines due to the escalation of tensions between Beijing and Washington), along with the ByteDance itself, 60 percent of its shares are owned by foreign investors.
TikTok was the target of an unprecedented, fierce global assault, despite the fact that many social media platforms and applications covet the same user data that TikTok collects. Therefore, it could be argued that outright banning TikTok won’t necessarily solve countries’ security issues or stop users, especially young people, from becoming addicted to social media. Instead, users are likely to switch to other applications, with Instagram likely to take center stage (after it introduced the Reels feature that is comparable to Tik Tok’s style). And because it impedes the free flow of information, the ban decision will not necessarily be exempt from some lawsuits.
As a result, the best course of action is still to increase public awareness of the risks associated with social media and the motivations of the companies that own them, on the one hand, and to protect user privacy through strong laws that ensure the security of their data and restrict the ability of domestic and international businesses to access it, on the other.
