China has criticised a costs currently in US Congress that could lead to the US ban of TikTok, calling it unfair.
It is the most recent development in a long row over health concerns surrounding the software, which is owned by a Chinese organization.
In many European nations, officials, politicians, and security personnel are prohibited from installing it on job phones.
What are the three main cybercrimes that TikTok has, and how does the business listen to them?
1. TikTok gathers an “overobvious” amount of data.
TikTok says the phone’s data collection is “in collection with business methods”.
Researchers examined the phone’s source code and discovered that it uses “excessive information harvesting.” According to researchers, TikTok gathers information about where, what system, and which apps are used on it.
2. The Chinese state might use TikTok to eavesdrop on people.
TikTok claims that the business is completely independent and that it has neither requested nor received customer data from the Chinese government.
Although it irks private authorities, the majority of us all agree that sharing large amounts of personal information is our social network agreement.
They give us their services for nothing in exchange for using our knowledge to buy advertising on their platforms or buy our data to different companies trying to market to us elsewhere on the internet.
The problem with TikTok is that it is owned by Beijing-based software large ByteDance, making it unique as a non-American popular game. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, for instance, all collect equivalent amounts of data but are all US- founded businesses.
The majority of the rest of the world and US lawmakers have relied on faith for years to ensure that the data used by these platforms will not be used for illicit purposes that could compromise national security.
Evidence thus far suggests that this is only a philosophical danger, but a vague section of Chinese legislation passed in 2017 stokes these fears.
Article seven of China’s National Intelligence Law states that all Foreign organisations and citizens if” help, support and carbon- operate” with the government’s intelligence efforts.
People who are wary of all Chinese businesses, including TikTok, frequently cite this phrase.
However, experts from the Georgia Institute of Technology contend that this phrase is taken out of context and that the legislation also includes provisions for limitations protecting the rights of consumers and private businesses.
Since 2020, TikTok professionals have made it clear to the public that Chinese employees are unable to access the data of people who are not Chinese.
However, ByteDance acknowledged in 2022 that several of its Beijing-based staff had access to the data of at least two journalists in the US and the British to monitor their sites and check whether they were meeting TikTok people who were suspected of leaking details to the press.
TikTok’s spokeswoman says the employees who accessed the data were dismissed.
The company insists that user data never has been stored in China and is building data centers in Texas for US user data and in Europe for data from its citizens.
3. TikTok might be used as a “brainwashing” tool.
In November 2022, Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told US lawmakers:” The Chinese government could … control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations”. The assertion has been made numerous times.
The fact that TikTok’s sister app, Douyin, which is only accessible in China, is heavily censored and allegedly engineered to encourage educational and wholesome content to go viral for its young user base amplifies those concerns.
In China, all social media platforms are severely censored, with an army of internet police deleting content that criticizes the government or stirs up political unrest.
At the start of TikTok’s ascendancy, there were high- profile cases of censorship on the app: a user in the US had her account suspended for discussing Beijing’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang. After a fierce public backlash, TikTok apologised and reinstated the account.
There have n’t been many instances of censorship since then, aside from the contentious moderation decisions that all platforms deal with.
Researchers at Citizen Lab compared TikTok and Douyin. They came to the conclusion that TikTok does not practice the same form of political censorship.
” The platform does not enforce obvious post censorship”, researchers said in 2021.
Analysts from Georgia Institute of Technology also looked for subjects like the Taiwanese independence or jokes about Chinese President Xi Jinping, and came up with the observation that” Videos in all of these categories can easily be found on TikTok. Many are popular and widely shared”.
Theoretical risk
The overall picture, then, is one of theoretical fears- and theoretical risk.
Critics argue TikTok is a” Trojan horse”- although it looks harmless, it could prove to be a powerful weapon during times of conflict, for example.
India, which took action against the app and dozens of other Chinese platforms in 2020, has already outlawed the app.
However, a US ban on TikTok might have a significant impact on the platform because, in general, US allies frequently fall in line with such decisions.
It is worth noting, of course, that these risks are a one- way street. Because access to Chinese citizens has been blocked for a long time, China is not concerned about US apps.
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4 days ago
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29 June 2020
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