Georgia L Gilholy is a staff member at Young Voices UK.
Technology Minister Michelle Donelan has literally stepped on the gas. Washington and Brussels may be willing to stop their government officials from using TikTok on work devices, but the UK won’t follow in their footsteps without “significant evidence” their route is the right one.
“I think that’s a personal choice,” she told POLITICO last week. “As a conservative, I’m a strong believer in personal choice.”
These are interesting comments from a government official who has overseen a crackdown on “legal but harmful” online content and passed legislation allowing people to be arrested for silent prayer.
Hypocrisy aside, there is already a lot of evidence that TikTok violates people’s privacy and potentially poses a national security risk.
Last August, Parliament quickly removed his TikTok profile days after it was created amid scores of MPs complaining about the risks to data. Why did they consider this measure necessary for their own account, but not for individual MEPs and their staff?
Consecutive research has found that TikTok poses a very real threat to privacy. While the company claims, as Donelan explained, that it only stores user information in the US and Singapore, this is far from the whole truth.
According to China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, all China-based organizations and citizens are required to “assist, assist and cooperate” with the national intelligence agency. There is no indication that TikTok’s parent company has opposed this requirement, and thus UK authorities should assume that they are cooperating with Beijing’s tough decrees on these matters.
This law and its ties to the despotic CCP and its People’s Liberation Army were in part behind the blacklisting of Huawei and ZTE as a “national security threat” in Washington. These facts no doubt played a role in canceling out the former’s role in the UK’s 5G infrastructure. Why would TikTok agree when in doubt?
The app has also been implicated in a range of troubling content. A 2019 British report concluded that a quarter of the children surveyed had been live-streaming with a user they had never met in person on the Chinese video app, while one in 20 had received an invitation to join undress
Meanwhile, a 2020 BBC investigation uncovered hundreds of obnoxious sexual remarks posted publicly in the comments section of TikTok videos uploaded by minors.
Precarious surveillance policies have fueled panic across various social media platforms, but it’s even more concerning in the case of TikTok given its overwhelmingly young user base.
There are also concerns that the app is deliberately trying to “dumb down” overseas youth. While the Chinese version of the app (Douyin), also owned by Beijing-based conglomerate (ByteDance), recommends science and history videos to kids, Western users are bombarded with tarot card readings, dance trends and energy drink ads.
Political propaganda is also a serious threat. Internal documents leaked to the Guardian in 2019 contained evidence that the platform’s internal moderators were ordered to censor content related to the Tiananmen Square massacre and Tibet’s independence – issues critical for are of great interest to the Chinese state.
Western observers are legitimately concerned that the platform could offer users a distorted view of history, promoting the CCP’s authoritarian stance far beyond China’s borders.
Donelan’s failure to target TikTok’s presence on government devices, or even to issue a note of caution, suggests either that she is ill-informed about the nature of the app or that she demonstrates continued naivety towards the companies of hostile states like China sets the British establishment has long suffered
Of course, TikTok has repeatedly assured gamers, politicians, and hackers that security is its top priority, denying it poses a risk to security or society. But why would any government minister worth his salt take a company with Chinese Communist Party ties at its word?
If Conservatives were even serious about strengthening the UK state, let alone grassroots culture, they would seriously consider the damage TikTok is doing. Instead, we have a government that, like many before it, is quick to use harsh words but rarely acts on its grievances.
Britain has neither the resources nor the duty to intervene in every international crisis, but in our internal affairs we fail of our own will on simple questions of government security.