Is TikTok a Chinese Cambridge Analytica data bomb waiting to explode?

guest · Dec 15, 2022

U.S. Senate approves to ban TikTok on government devices
By Karthik Mudaliar @heykarthikm - December 15, 2022

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Wednesday night to prohibit federal employees from using the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok on government-owned devices. The bill (PDF) must now be approved by the US House of Representatives and President Joe Biden before it can become law. The House of Representatives must pass the Senate bill before the end of the current congressional session, which is expected to occur next week.
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Authorities are concerned that ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok, could share information gathered from U.S. users with the Chinese government. In November, FBI Director Chris Wray warned lawmakers that the Chinese government could use TikTok to launch "influence operations" or to "technically compromise" millions of devices.

The Senate, during the previous Congress, had unanimously approved legislation in August 2020 to prohibit TikTok from being used on government devices.
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Reuters: U.S. Senate passes bill to bar federal employees from using TikTok on government-owned devices

By David Shepardson - December 14, 2022
The U.S. Senate late on Wednesday passed by voice vote a bill to bar federal employees from using Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok on government-owned devices.
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tekkaman · Dec 21, 2022

In my opinion all social networks were made to collect and sell users data. The only reason US is so worried is because the more users flock from US social media sites, more personal data US looses and goes to China. Meaning We want YOUR DATA don't give it to China please!. I remember Mark Zuckerberg sketchy origins. How he took photos without permission and posted them online. He has no respect for privacy. Anyways what I'm saying is that there's no good social media. All are bad if you give them your personal information. In the case of Facebook it's almost impossible as you have to give them your phone number to use it. Basically saying who you are in the process.

Rasheed187 · Dec 24, 2022

tekkaman said: ↑

In my opinion all social networks were made to collect and sell users data. The only reason US is so worried is because the more users flock from US social media sites, more personal data US looses and goes to China. Meaning We want YOUR DATA don't give it to China please!
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Yes, but I can somewhat understand that the US is worried about data collection being done by China, after all this is their big competitor when it comes to economics. Now that I think of it, are Instagram, Facebook and Twitter allowed in China? Because it has to be a level playing field, and we all know that China hasn't been playing fairly. I wonder if Tesla is going to make it over there with all of those new Chinese based EV brands coming up.

guest · Dec 25, 2022

ByteDance finds four employees had accessed US journalists' TikTok data; fires them
By Hemant Saxena @HeMaNt8711 - December 23, 2022

Slapping the charges of gross misconduct on four of its employees, ByteDance, the parent company of the video app TikTok has fired them all. The company found the employees guilty of accessing the user data of two US journalists secretly and without seeking their consent. Among the four people fired, two were in the United States and two in China. Of the two reporters whose data was accessed, one belonged to BuzzFeed News and the other works with Financial Times.
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A spokesperson from ByteDance disclosed that it was a deliberate effort by its former employees to spy on reporters by looking for their IP addresses in an attempt to investigate leaks of company information and whether they were present at the same location as they had suspected while leaking it. This action was in complete violation of the company's policies and as such, the necessary step was taken.
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Source: NewYork Times (Paywall) via: Reuters
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guest · Jan 2, 2023

India set an ‘incredibly important precedent’ by banning TikTok, FCC Commissioner says
By Manish Singh @refsrc - January 2, 2023

India set an “incredibly important precedent” by banning TikTok two and a half years ago, FCC Commissioner said, as he projected a similar fate for the Chinese giant Bytedance app in the U.S.
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Brendan Carr, Commissioner of the FCC, warned that TikTok “operates as a sophisticated surveillance tool,” and told the Indian daily Economic Times that banning the social app is a “natural next step in our efforts to secure communication network.”

The senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission said he is worried that China could use sensitive and non-public data gleaned from TikTok to “blackmail, espionage, foreign influence campaigns and surveillance.”

“We need to follow India’s lead more broadly to weed out other nefarious apps as well,” he said.
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TikTok had over 200 million monthly active users in India and counted the South Asian nation as its largest international market by users prior to the ban.
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guest · Jan 4, 2023

Why TikTok’s future has never been so cloudy
By Casey Newton @CaseyNewton - January 4, 2023

As 2023 begins, open up the most-downloaded charts for free apps on iOS and Google and you’ll find TikTok where it usually is: on top. The video-centric social app currently ranks No. 3 overall in both stores, trailing only a shopping app and mood diary (on Android) and a to-do app and video editor (on iOS). That video editing app is CapCut, by the way, and it is also developed by ByteDance; CapCut is an app for making TikTok videos.
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But while American teenagers spent their holiday break installing TikTok on their brand-new iPhones, US government officials were taking a much more skeptical view of the app and its Chinese parent company,

According to Reuters, 19 of the 50 states now restrict access to TikTok on government computers, with most of the bans being passed during a two-week period last month. That’s in addition to school districts and other parts of the public sector, which have introduced restrictions of their own.
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All of which raises a question that had seemed mostly resolved since Trump left office: could TikTok be banned in the United States, period?
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The company shared more details about its plans just before Christmas with Reuters. Here are Echo Wang and David Shephardson:

To overcome these hurdles, TikTok has sought to provide new layers of oversight to the U.S. government. It has expanded Oracle’s role to ensuring that TikTok’s technology infrastructure is separate from ByteDance, the sources said.
TikTok has also proposed to form a “proxy” board that would run the [US Data Security] division independent of ByteDance, the sources said.
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At such a fraught time, ByteDance can ill afford a high-profile mistake. And yet in the days after more states began to ban TikTok, an internal investigation found that ByteDance employees had used TikTok to record journalists’ physical locations using their IP addresses.
Baker-White reports:

According to materials reviewed by Forbes, ByteDance tracked multiple Forbes journalists as part of this covert surveillance campaign, which was designed to unearth the source of leaks inside the company following a drumbeat of stories exposing the company’s ongoing links to China. [...]

But as the movement to ban TikTok accelerates, the company can no longer plead innocence to charges of targeted surveillance. For a handful of reporters, “TikTok is spying on you” was the rare conspiracy theory that turned out to be true.
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guest · Jan 9, 2023

NJ governor bans TikTok on state devices
By Stephen Neukam - January 9, 2023

New Jersey is the latest state to ban the use of TikTok, the popular video-based social media platform, on state government devices, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced on Monday.

“Bolstering cybersecurity is critical to protecting the overall safety and welfare of our State,” Murphy said in a statement. “The proactive and preventative measures that we are implementing today will ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and safety of information assets managed by New Jersey State government.”
“There have been national security concerns about user data the Chinese government might require ByteDance to provide,” the statement adds.

“Analysis of various versions of TikTok have been found to collect the keystrokes of users, make screen captures every few seconds, access data from the phone’s clipboard, and collect the unique Media Access Control (MAC) address of the device, among other user information.”
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guest · Jan 10, 2023

TikTok CEO questioned by EU official over reports of ‘aggressive data harvesting and surveillance’
By Alexander Martin @AlexMartin - January 10, 2023

TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew was asked on Tuesday about “recent press reporting on aggressive data harvesting and surveillance in the US” during a meeting with the European Union’s top antitrust official.
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The main purpose of the morning meeting between Chew and Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, was to establish how TikTok was preparing to comply with new obligations the EU is bringing in through its Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The substance of the questions and answers were not disclosed in a read-out of the meeting between Chew and Vestager provided by the European Commission.

“At the meeting the parties also discussed GDPR and matters of privacy and data transfer obligations with a reference to the recent press reporting on aggressive data harvesting and surveillance in the US,” the read-out added.
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The range of portfolios that the CEO will need to answer highlights the precarious position of the Chinese company, which currently faces multiple investigations in Europe over whether it complies with the bloc’s stringent privacy rules, as well as the DSA and DMA’s obligations around user protection and competition.

The Chinese government “could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so choose, or to control software on millions of devices which gives the opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices,” Wray said.
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guest · Jan 18, 2023

TikTok is expanding its labels for state-run media accounts to more countries, including China
The labels were previously only applied to accounts from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
By Karissa Bell @karissabe - January 18, 2023

TikTok is expanding its use of labels for state-run media accounts, the company announced. The app is now bringing the tags, which identify “accounts run by organizations whose editorial output or decision-making process is subject to control or influence by a government,” to dozens of markets.
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The company is relatively late to adopt such labels compared with most of its counterparts.
Now, TikTok says it has formalized its policy and “will begin applying our state-controlled media label in a phased approach, starting immediately with over 40 markets across multiple regions.” And while the company’s announcement doesn’t name specific countries, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed the labels will appear on accounts run by Chinese state media outlets.

That’s notable as TikTok has long been viewed with suspicion by lawmakers and government officials over concerns about the company’s perceived ties to the Chinese government.
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But by finally expanding its state-run media labels, TikTok can now claim it’s treating accounts affiliated with Chinese government entities the same as other state-controlled media organizations. Of course, the labels alone are unlikely to dispel critics’ suspicions of the company.
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TikTok: TikTok's state-affiliated media policy

By Justin Erlich - January 18, 2023
At TikTok, we want to equip our community with context and tools to assess content on our platform. For instance, labels are added to videos with unsubstantiated content. Blue check marks on accounts help viewers understand an account holder is who they say they are. Last year, we began to pilot adding labels on content from state-controlled media, starting in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Today we're expanding our global state-affiliated media policy and label to help viewers better understand sources behind content.
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guest · Jan 19, 2023

University of Texas latest US school to ban TikTok
Great, now staff and students can stop scrolling and get back to work
By Laura Dobberstein - January 19, 2023

Faculty and students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) this week became the latest members of a public US university to lose access to Chinese video app TikTok via campus networks.
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Jeff Neyland, advisor to the president for technology strategy, notified students of the change via email on Tuesday.

"The university is taking these important steps to eliminate risks to information contained in the University's network and to our critical infrastructure," said Neyland. "As outlined in the governor's directive, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users' devices – including when, where and how they conduct internet activity – and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government."
Students and teachers alike immediately began to panic.

This is now what happens when you try to access TikTok on UT Austin wifi. Perpetual loading screen of doom. pic.twitter.com/4oMojU6eUR
— Laura Brown (@lcbrown91) January 17, 2023
Some celebrated the idea, although a cursory analysis of Twitter revealed most praise was issued for the positive effect the ban would have on student productivity.
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However, an op-ed written by two professionals from UT's Center for Media Engagement in the Austin American Statesman called the ban "overly broad," said it inhibited research, and argued that the video app was important for outreach and educational purposes as many professors turn to the Gen Z favorite to further explain subject material or for class projects.
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TikTok Blocked on University Network

January 17, 2023
The University of Texas at Austin is taking steps to comply with Governor Greg Abbott’s Dec. 7 directive to all state agencies to eliminate the cybersecurity risks posed by TikTok. The federal government recognizes the video-sharing mobile application as a national security threat. Several federal agencies and states have already prohibited its use on their government networks and government-issued devices.
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guest · Jan 20, 2023

EU's Breton Warns TikTok CEO: Comply With New Digital Rules
By Associated Press - January 20, 2023

The European Union’s digital policy chief warned TikTok’s boss Thursday that the social media app will have to fall in line with tough new rules for online platforms set to take effect later this year.
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EU Commissioner Thierry Breton held a video call with Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video sharing app that’s coming under increasing scrutiny from Western authorities over fears about data privacy, cybersecurity and misinformation.

The two discussed the company’s plans to comply with the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which is set to take effect for the biggest online companies in September. The act is a set of sweeping rules that will require platforms to reduce harmful online content and combat online risks.

“With younger audiences comes greater responsibility,” Breton said, according to a readout of the call. “It is not acceptable that behind seemingly fun and harmless features, it takes users seconds to access harmful and sometimes even life-threatening content.
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Breton added that, with millions of young users in Europe, TikTok has a “special responsibility” to ensure its content is safe.

A London-based spokesperson for TikTok didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment. The company’s Brussels-based director of public policy and government relations, Caroline Greer, said on Twitter that Breton’s talk with Shou was a “good exchange” and that the “safety of our users is paramount.”
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guest · Jan 21, 2023

TikTok confirms that its own employees can decide what goes viral
By Mitchell Clark - January 20, 2023

TikTok has confirmed to Forbes that some of its US employees have the ability to boost videos in order to “introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.” The statement comes as part of a report about TikTok’s “Heating” button, which Forbes says can be used to put selected videos onto users’ For You pages, helping boost views by sidestepping the algorithm that supposedly drives the TikTok experience.
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Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok, told Forbes that increasing views to particular videos isn’t the only reason for heating. TikTok will also “promote some videos to help diversify the content experience” (read: make sure your feed isn’t entirely made up of one or two trends), he said.

According to an internal document obtained by Forbes, however, heated videos reportedly make up “around 1-2 percent” of “total daily video views.”
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The news isn’t necessarily a surprise. There have been reports for years that TikTok used promises of promoted content to convince politicians and businesses to use its platform, and companies, especially in the music industry, have made no secret of using the platform to promote their brands.
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guest · Jan 21, 2023

More universities are banning TikTok from their campus networks and devices
By Taylor Hatmaker @tayhatmaker - January 20, 2023

Public universities across a widening swath of U.S. states have banned TikTok in recent months, and two of the country’s largest colleges just followed suit.
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The University of Texas and Texas A&M University are two of the latest colleges to take action against the social app, which is owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

The flurry of recent campus TikTok bans was inspired by executive orders issued by a number of state governors. Public universities in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Dakota and now Texas have taken measures to restrict access to the app, blocking it from campus Wi-Fi networks and school-owned devices.
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guest · Jan 27, 2023

Inside TikTok’s proposal to address US national security concerns
By Elias Groll @EliasGroll | CyberScoop - January 27, 2023

TikTok has presented a detailed proposal to a secretive federal panel that will decide its future in the U.S. that relies extensively on the American tech giant Oracle to mitigate perceived security risks of the viral video app.
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A TikTok official speaking on condition of anonymity described the company’s proposal to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to CyberScoop. Aspects of the proposal, known as Project Texas (a likely reference to Oracle’s Austin headquarters), have been previously reported and briefed to members of civil society, but as negotiations have stalled with CFIUS, which will decide whether the company can continue to operate in the U.S., the company has begun to describe the proposal in greater technical detail.
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Under the terms of the proposal, TikTok would divulge core segments of its technology to Oracle and a set of third-party auditors who would verify that the app is not promoting content in line with Beijing’s wishes or sharing U.S. user data with China.

“Project Texas effort clearly reflects a serious effort to address U.S. government concerns and has been informed by years of negotiation,” said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center who has been briefed on the plan
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The proposal from TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, represents an attempt to end a battle between TikTok and the U.S. government dating back to the Trump administration over whether it represents a national security threat.
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guest · Jan 30, 2023

Europe’s crackdown on Big Tech omitted TikTok — but now that’s set to change
By Evelyn Cheng @chengevelyn, Ryan Browne @Ryan_Browne_ - January 30, 2023

KEY POINTS

Unlike its larger American peers, TikTok hasn’t faced the kinds of mega fines or legal penalties that Google, Facebook-owner Meta or Amazon have in the EU over the years.

TikTok has stayed out of regulatory scrutiny partly because it’s kept out of the crosshairs of commercial interests in Europe.

That doesn’t mean political leaders and legislators in Europe aren’t worried.

Moritz Korner, a German lawmaker, said the app poses “several unacceptable risks for European users.”

At the executive level, the European Commission’s tone on TikTok has begun to change.

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TikTok is beginning to feel the sting of political and regulatory pressure in Europe, where the Chinese-owned app has largely evaded the scrutiny it’s faced in the U.S.

EU Commissioner of the Internal Market Thierry Breton warned TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in a meeting this month the bloc could ban the app if it didn’t comply with new rules on digital content well ahead of a Sep. 1 deadline.
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The difference with TikTok is that the app has kept out of the crosshairs of commercial interests in Europe.

“There is no political demand for investigation into Chinese entities,” Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, the director of think tank the European Centre for International Political Economy, said in an interview in December.
“The user base of TikTok is a lot bigger than a lot of people in Europe think,” he said. But, he added, “you’re not going to look very closely if they don’t steal too much from your ad revenue.”
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guest · Jan 30, 2023

TikTok CEO to testify before House panel about app’s security and ties to China
By Lauren Feiner @lauren_feiner - January 30, 2023

KEY POINTS

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23 about the app’s security and privacy practices and its ties to China through its parent company ByteDance, the panel’s chair announced.

It comes as the company’s negotiations with the U.S. government over how to secure its app in the country have dragged on.

Concerns have spanned both sides of the aisle, with lawmakers passing a ban on TikTok on government devices in a year-end legislative package, citing security fears.

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before a House panel on March 23 about the app’s security and privacy practices and its ties to China through parent company ByteDance.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced the hearing on Monday, saying it would be Chew’s first appearance before a congressional panel.

“ByteDance-owned TikTok has knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data,” E&C Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said in a statement. “Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.”
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guest · Feb 2, 2023

Apple and Google face mounting pressure to remove TikTok from app stores
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) wrote directly to Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai Thursday calling on their companies to remove downloads of the app.
By Makena Kelly @kellymakena - February 2, 2023

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) demanded that Apple and Google “immediately” remove TikTok from their app stores in a letter addressed to the companies’ chief executives, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, Thursday.
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Bennet’s push to restrict downloads of the app is just the latest in a series of mounting congressional actions to ban the embattled Chinese-owned app. Since January, Republicans and Democrats have been calling for either their colleagues or Biden administration officials to quickly impose stricter data collection restrictions or a nationwide ban on the app, citing its possible risks to US national security.

“TikTok’s vast influence and aggressive data collection pose a specific threat to US national security because of its parent company’s obligations under Chinese law,” Bennet wrote. “Given these grave and growing concerns, I ask that you remove TikTok from your respective app stores immediately.”
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Bennet, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is the first lawmaker to reach out directly to app store providers like Apple and Google requesting TikTok’s removal.

Unlike Google, Apple has a lot to lose regarding its relationship with both the US and China.
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guest · Feb 2, 2023

TikTok’s transparency theater
What I observed during a recent visit to TikTok’s first transparency center.
By Alex Heath @alexeheath - February 3, 2023

TikTok is staring down the barrel of an outright ban in the US. It has already been prohibited on federal employee devices, blocked by dozens of universities across the country, and lawmakers are calling for its removal from US app stores.
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It’s with that context that I and a handful of other journalists were invited to the company’s Los Angeles headquarters earlier this week for the first media tour of its “Transparency and Accountability Center.” It’s a space that, like the political discussion about TikTok these days, seems more about virtue signaling than anything else. Company officials say the center is designed for regulators, academics, and auditors to learn more about how the app works and its security practices. We were told that a politician-who-would-not-be-named had toured it the day before. TikTok eventually plans to open more centers in Washington, DC, Dublin, and Singapore.

Our tour was part of a multi-week press blitz by TikTok to push Project Texas, a novel proposal to the US government that would partition off American user data in lieu of a complete ban.
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Ultimately, I was left with the feeling that, like its powerful algorithm, TikTok built its transparency center to show people what it thinks they want to see. The company seems to have realized that it won’t save itself from a US ban on the technical merits of its Project Texas proposal. The debate is now purely a matter of politics and optics. Unlike the tour I went on, that’s something TikTok can’t control.
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guest · Feb 8, 2023

TikTok algorithm could be shared with US, as company fights growing bans
By Ben Lovejoy @benlovejoy - February 8, 2023

The infamous TikTok algorithm, which has been accused of taking users into dangerous rabbit holes, could be shared with US officials, says the company. TikTok owner ByteDance is hoping that the offer of transparency will fend off further bans of the Chinese video sharing app.

Not everyone is convinced that the offer goes far enough, however …
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The TikTok algorithm
The TikTok algorithm – the way in which the app creates personalized video feeds for each user – has been one of the company’s most closely-guarded secrets.

But investigations have shown that the main signal appeared to be how long you spend watching particular types of content – and the app quickly focuses on showing you as much similar content as possible, however unhealthy or harmful it may be.
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Transparency offer
ByteDance has responded by offering to allow a US company, Oracle, review the code driving its algorithm, as the WSJ reports.
But some think that it’s too complex for such a simple-sounding solution to work.
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hawki · Mar 23, 2023

mood said: ↑

TikTok CEO to testify before House panel about app’s security and ties to China
By Lauren Feiner @lauren_feiner - January 30, 2023
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FYI: TikTok CEO Testifies at House Commerce Committee
Today, March 23, 10:00 AM:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?526609-1/tiktok-ceo-testifies-house-commerce-committee

Taped version of the hearing will also be available after the hearing at the above link.

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