ON AUGUST 6th, President Donald Trump issued an executive order demanding Tik Tok to either sell its U.S. operations to an American company or face being banned from all transactions with the United States. The executive order expressed concerns about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) using personal information uploaded to the app to track or blackmail federal employees or exercising censorship to head “disinformation campaigns that benefit the CCP, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.” While many suspect Trump of using the order to improve his ratings for November’s presidential election, several politicians from both parties have expressed concern about the possible threat TikTok poses to personal information, and by extension, to national security.

The non-deal

   Trump’s executive order gave ByteDance—TikTok’s parent IT company—45 days until it would be banned and until November 12 for the company to be sold to an American corporation unless it assuaged before that time American fears about its potential threat to national security. The administration encouraged ByteDance to find a company that would buy TikTok, to which Microsoft rose as an eager candidate. During these proceedings, however, the CCP on August 31 abruptly promulgated stricter regulations for exporting technology, presumably to prevent losing monopoly over TikTok’s priceless algorithm*. Negotiations with Microsoft thus fell apart just before finalization and a new buyer emerged: Oracle, an American software maker co-founded by a Trump campaign fundraiser and supporter, partnered with Walmart. A rough agreement that these two corporations would own 20% of TikTok stocks was made, but the companies failed to reconcile on administrative details until on September 27, a federal judge struck down the ban mere hours before its effect**. The order to sell TikTok to an American company still remains.

TikTok’s data privacy

   TikTok’s website claims the data it gathers from users are: the videos you watch and for how long, texts within their texting feature, country location, internet address and the kind of device they are on. This is not much different from other U.S.-based social media and collects far less personal information than Facebook, which according to The Washington Post “tracks users across devices, inside other apps and websites [and] even tracks you when you’re not using Facebook and your phone is off.”

   However, Patrick Johnson, chief technology officer of the privacy company Disconnect, claimed that TikTok was much more secretive about its data collection than other U.S. companies. He also stated that what was unusual about the app was its “abnormal” amount of information about the device it was installed on, such as screen resolution, font, and Apple advertising identifier that could be used to “fingerprint” a device***. Digital fingerprinting is a data collection of largely unchanging features about your device—screen and language settings, operating systems, etc.— in order to identify devices. It is used to see whether you’ve visited a certain website before, create profiles of your behavior, make certain ads follow you around, or prevent fraudulent use of passwords—not unlike a stealthier alternative to cookies. While major U.S. tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Mozilla have obscured fingerprinting on their browsers because of the involuntary nature in which this data is collected, TikTok has largely deflected accusations about it collecting such data****. A TikTok spokesperson declared accusations comparing its digital fingerprinting to spyware as “baseless accusations made without a shred of evidence” and has declined to comment further*****.

   Another common concern is that TikTok would store its data in China, allowing easy access for the CCP. TikTok representatives have protested that U.S. TikTok’s data is stored in Virginia, backed up in Singapore, and moderated in California, allowing no access for the Chinese government. Yet, there is no way to know what detours the data could take to other locations before settling in U.S. databases. It could even be temporarily moved abroad without breaking laws even if the data’s official storage is the United States. The location of the data does not guarantee that TikTok would not hand over its data if Beijing comes to demand it.

The China question

   All the problems and fears attributed to TikTok ultimately trace back to the company’s basis in China.

   TikTok has so far taken pains to demonstrate its supposed independence from the CCP. In addition to storing data in the United States, the company is known for hiring many non-Chinese staff and has emphasized that it is banned in China (TikTok is the international only version of ByteDance’s similar Chinese app called Douyin). Even the app’s contents and PR claims to steer clear of politics if possible, championing lighthearted content as its principal attractive feature******.

   However, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is still based in Beijing and is thus compelled to share data with the government at its request. The United States has a similar policy called the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, which allows federal law enforcement to demand U.S. tech companies to hand over requested data whether it is stored in domestic or foreign soil. The only difference is that the U.S. system requires there to be a warrant and is thus more transparent, while the opaque Chinese equivalent poses a potential threat to U.S. national security.

   In 2019, Trump had also ordered Chinese firm Beijing Kunlun Technology to sell Grindr, the gay dating app, under concerns for federal employees’ personal information such as private messages and HIV status. Kunlun finalized a deal with San Vicente Acquisition LLC, an investment group. However, Reuters reported that there was evidence the buyer had ties to the Chinese owner.

Censorship (and deepfakes)

   Other concerns about TikTok’s threat to American security—less related to privacy and curiously not mentioned in Trump’s executive orders—is the censorship the company could use to influence its users. According to the company’s transparency reports, China made zero censorship or information requests, while the United States and India have made the most frequent information removal and viewing requests.

   However, the app appears to be taking advantage of its image of providing pure entertainment to withhold information sensitive to China via omission. This tendency first came to scrutiny when during the Hong Kong protests, when searches for the city on the app revealed “barely a hint of unrest in sight*******.” In September 2019, the Guardian revealed that TikTok instructs its moderators to censor videos mentioning Tibetan independence, Tiananmen Square, the Cambodian genocide, exaggerations of the ethnic conflict between blacks and whites, the banned religious group Falun Gong, and others, “advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app.” TikTok claimed that these guidelines reflected an outdated philosophy the company had held in its early days, which were now more open and employed localized moderators. However, TikTok apologized two months later for temporarily removing a viral video condemning mass detention of Uighurs “due to a human moderation error********.” Defenders of the app, however, point out that TikTok was only launched in 2017 and so has less experience with content moderation and censorship.

   A rising concern about misinformation on TikTok is the use of deepfakes, the  editing of a video or photo so that a targeted person’s face is pasted onto someone else performing illegal or questionable actions. Deepfakes exist on other social media platforms as well, but TikTok’s reliance on algorithm and the relatively little human interaction it provides increases the possibility deepfake videos will be circulated widely before they are taken down. Addressing these concerns, TikTok explicitly declared a ban on deepfakes and partnered with fact-checking organizations Politi-fact and Lead Stories to prevent misinformation for the 2020 election.

Net-nationalism and elections

   Yet, the undeniable political gains Donald Trump gained from these executive orders have been making people reluctant to affirm his concerns as clear potential dangers. Trump gained publicity by ramping up U.S.-China tensions at a time when his supporters were hostile to China due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cybersecurity issues in particular are easy tools to use to escalate public outcry, as their ambiguity allow them to be blown up as more imminent and significant issues while their actual inflicted damage is difficult to assess with precision. In addition, TikTok is an immensely popular app in the United States, numbering about 50 million daily active U.S. users*********. Threats to ban this beloved app inevitably drew attention to Trump and the nation-serving intent behind his executive orders. And all this took place mere months before the presidential election. There is also suspicion that Trump is bitter towards TikTok users for interfering with his rally at Tulsa this June. And considering how he wanted to ban WeChat along with TikTok, the president appears to be motivated in part by a desire to secure American tech companies’ monopoly in the United States.

   Trump’s actions are reminiscent of India’s banning of TikTok this June 29 after deadly border skirmishes with China. India was home to nearly a quarter of TikTok’s customers worldwide, with over 600 million downloads. The ban has held as of writing this article, and while China has not moved out of the territory that it has promised, the Indian government is facing criticism for further oppressing the country’s internet in addition to limiting lower-class influencers who were more reliant on TikTok than over apps like YouTube and Instagram**********.

Social media in “info-war”

   So, could we consider TikTok a surreptitious CCP weapon in development? The  answer still remains evasive. Actors like the Russian Internet Research Agency, which creates a multitude of troll accounts and news to interfere in other nations’ politics (most notoriously the United States’ 2016 presidential elections) often by impersonating others could most likely be considered as weaponizing social media as it is a focused, deliberate interference. It is difficult to say selective representation of data counts as a purposeful, political action with malintent, especially as the main ostensible goal of social media companies is engagement, regardless of party affiliations. “Nobody knew what the Russians could do with [social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections], so no one knew to look out for it,” said Professor Bockett, professor of Cybersecurity in UIC. “No one expected Facebook to have to deal with this, as their stance has been ‘We are just a platform, we are not responsible for what people do.’ […] We are coming to an era when social media companies are becoming held accountable more in terms how a publishing company is being held accountable for the content they deliver—is that the right way to do it? I have no idea, and neither does anybody else. We’ll have to fiddle with it until we figure out a better way of doing it.”

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   One positive effect of the TikTok controversy is that people and governments are becoming more aware of how vulnerable their data is to social media companies. In addition to U.S. politicians issuing warnings about personal data on TikTok and other social media, the U.S. senate has been at work since 2019 trying to pass a law that “authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to hold companies accountable when they misuse or fail to safeguard consumers’ information and creates a private right of action to enforce privacy rights***********.” The proposal is still pending review; such technology and data privacy concerns are still new to policymakers, who are tasked with protecting their citizens’ data without splitting up internet space with regulations as to make it unusable. With the current threats of misinformation, disinformation, espionage, and blackmail, none of us in the democratic systems are ready to face the full effects of politicized social media.

*The L.A. Times

**Wall Street Journal

***The Washington Post

****Digiday

*****TechCrunch

******Wired Mag

*******The Washington Post

********AlJazeera

*********CNBC

**********The Observer

***********National Law Review