Indians lost access to TikTok back in 2020—long before anyone was worried about Chinese apps. Does US paranoia about the app make our government look like a genius? Or are both cases of politicians grandstanding against China—to win cheap points?
Researched by: Nirmal Bhansali
You’ll have to remind me about the TikTok saga…
The basic deets: Here’s how it started:
- In 2012, Zhang Yiming starts a company called ByteDance. Its first big product is a personalised news aggregator for Chinese users called Toutiao.
- Separately, in 2014, a startup called Musical.ly is born—which allows users to upload lip syncing music vids.
- Byte Dance launches a video sharing app called Douyin in China—and TikTok overseas.
- In 2017, ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, it merges with TikTok.
- In 2019, Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song ‘Old Town Road’ on TikTok—it goes viral—demonstrating not just the pull of the singer but also the platform. The rest is social media lore.
The numbers: Between 2018 and 2022, TikTok was the most downloaded app around the world. But last year, Instagram zoomed past with 767 million downloads—compared to TikTok’s 733 million. That said, the app has 1.1 billion active monthly users—who spend an average of 95 minutes a day on the app. The number for Insta is 62 minutes.
Point to note: TikTok’s popularity has been dropping in the US—where it has 170 million users. In November 2023, the number of downloads had dropped by 20% compared to November, 2022.
The moolah: TikTok recorded $120 billion in revenues in 2023, of which they generated $16 billion from the US. Some estimates suggest that the company is valued at over $100 billion.
Most relevantly, ownership: How Chinese is TikTok? The company was incorporated in California—and never offered in mainland China. It is currently headquartered in LA and Singapore—and has a Singaporean CEO.
Now TikTok is 100% owned by ByteDance. So the question really is: How Chinese is ByteDance? It was founded in China—by two Chinese entrepreneurs. But ownership is complicated, according to TikTok CEO Shou Chew:
60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors such as the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, while 20% of the firm is owned by Zhang and 20% owned by employees around the world. Three of the company’s five board members are Americans, he said.
But, but, but: ByteDance also has an in-house Communist Party committee—mandated by Chinese law. But the key concern is a national security law—which we get into below.
So it’s the same issue as India… national security?
Yes… but the US government wants a different kind of resolution.
The new law: Last week, Congress passed a law—signed by President Biden—that requires TikTok to find a non-Chinese buyer within 270 days. It will get a 90-day extension if there is sign of “significant progress” toward a sale. If it fails to do so, the app will be banned.
The reasons why: There are three broad reasons why TikTok could pose a national security risk:
The first is that TikTok is part of a nefarious Chinese government influence operation designed to sway U.S. politics. The second is that TikTok can be used to collect personal data on Americans. The third is that voluntarily downloading TikTok onto phones or devices allows for the injection of malicious software by China.
Now, the third is perhaps the most likely and serious risk. But oddly enough, US legislators are most concerned about #1 and #2.
Reason #1, user data
The widely cited reason is the risk that ByteDance will be forced to hand over personal data of US users over to Beijing. The reason: There are a number of Chinese laws that require Chinese companies to do so.
In 2018, China amended its National Intelligence Law, which requires any organisation or citizen to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work. That means ByteDance is legally bound to help with gathering intelligence.
In 2021, China introduced a new data security law, which applies to data processing activities conducted outside of the country that may “harm the national security or public interests.” There is also a cybersecurity law in China, which says the state will take measures to monitor, prevent and handle cybersecurity risks and threats “arising both within and outside the PRC’s territory.”
It certainly doesn’t seem fair when Beijing would never allow any other country to come within spitting distance of data of Chinese citizens.
But, but, but: TikTok says it has never turned over any data to Beijing. And US data is stored in the US—in Texas, to be specific. In the EU, its storage and use is overseen by an independent cyber-security company. And some researchers say that the 2017 Chinese law has been misinterpreted—and it includes protections for users and companies. (Of course, the Chinese government is the sole interpreter and executor of all laws… so there’s that.)
Also this: There is no evidence that TikTok collects more information on its users than any US social media company. And critics point out there is plenty of user data on sale to the highest buyer—China can just go shopping:
[M]any foreign and domestic tech companies collect data on their users at staggering scale and depth. Many of those data are traded globally in legal markets through third-party data brokers. LiveRamp (previously part of Acxiom), one of the largest U.S.-based brokers, has amassed about 3,000 pieces of data on every U.S. consumer and up to 1,500 data points on each of 2.5 billion people globally... Information can come from your phone, smart speaker, connected car, dating app, front door camera or any other Internet-connected device.
Or as the New York Times points out, “it would be much more effective for China to just hack every home’s Wi-Fi router — most of which are manufactured in China and are notoriously insecure — and obtain far more sensitive data than it can get from knowing which videos we swipe on TikTok.”
Reminder: Two Twitter employees were caught selling data on dissidents to the Saudi government—which used the information to assassinate one of them. It’s not that hard to buy employees at Meta or Google, as well.
Spy recruitment tool? While the Biden White House has stuck to vague assertions of risk, the Donald Trump 2020 executive order banning TikTok specifically claimed “TikTok's data collection could potentially allow China to ‘track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage’." But security experts are highly sceptical:
It could be used for espionage purposes, to identify targets for recruitment, but again, there is no evidence that China has done this. Finally, this data could be useful for counterintelligence purposes to identify U.S. agents by correlating it with other data. It is likely that China (like other major intelligence agencies) runs analytical programs to identify persons of interest, but TikTok users may not be the best subject population for finding intelligence agents.
You think? That said, our jawans seem easily lured by Pakistani ladies on Facebook so...
Reason #2: Operation brainwash
This is where the worries started—back in 2019, the Washington Post flagged the strange absence of any content on the Hong Kong protests on TikTok. OTOH, the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views. Soon American lawmakers became worried at the prospect of the Chinese manipulating entire populations—by controlling what they see on TikTok.
The anti-semitic TikTok: Recently, the app was accused of encouraging anti-Israeli sentiment among easily influenced Zoomers. Celebrities like Sacha Baron Cohen and Amy Schumer accused the app of “creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis.” Senator Marco Rubio jumped on X—that bastion of sanity—to declare: “TikTok is a tool China uses to spread propaganda to Americans, now it’s being used to downplay Hamas terrorism.” The accusations were false—but it made little difference despite TikTok’s best efforts.
The value of ‘influence operations’: There is no doubt that social media platforms are routinely used to spread propaganda—and even spark violence. Again, security experts say that it’s not that easy to capitalise on domestic unrest:
Influence operations are generally overrated. If American democracy is at risk, survey data suggests this has little to do with external actors. The problem is domestic. This is not confined to the United States—a wave of right-wing populism is sweeping across democracies from India to the Netherlands and the United States, as a reaction to perceived injustices… even Russia, which is usually best at influence operations, is struggling with exploiting these tensions, and China is not as good as Russia in influence operations aimed at foreign audiences.
Well, at the very least, you don’t need to control the damn app to achieve that kind of manipulation.
Point to note: Since those early media reports, there has been little evidence of TikTok censoring content—according to US researchers.
So why are they banning it?
Mostly because it makes for good optics. As civil rights experts point out—a ban does nothing:
“Banning access to one application does not create safety or security for Americans’ data from China or from any other country,” says Kate Ruane… That’s because “so many applications and social media services collect our data and sell it or leak it all over the world, all the time.” Whatever TikTok might contribute, Ruane says, is “barely a drop in the bucket.”
But it does make politicians look tough in an election year—hence, the bipartisan crowd is out to lynch TikTok.
Kinda like India: Our government announced sweeping bans on Chinese apps—while Beijing was nibbling territory on the Ladakh border. It’s a cheap way to look tough—when doing not very much. Our trade deficit with China remains alive and growing despite all the bans—and is a far more serious national security concern than TikTok or PubG.
The bottomline: Whatever the decision on TikTok, we should acknowledge that any ban involves a tradeoff between freedom and security. When India banned Chinese apps in 2020, internet freedom activists warned:
There is little in terms of evidence on how these apps are threatening the sovereignty, integrity, and defence of India… Arbitrary government power has been exercised here. Remember if today Chinese apps can be banned, tomorrow nothing stops them from banning Indian apps in a similar non-transparent manner.
And yet no one raised a serious challenge in India. That won’t be the case in the US—where TikTok already scored a legal victory in 2020—overturning Trump’s ban. Let’s see what the courts say this time.
Reading list
Associated Press via Mint has a useful timeline of TikTok’s trajectory. James Andrew Lewis in CSIS offers a clear-eyed analysis of the national security threat posed by TikTok. Vox has a good overview of where we’re at. BBC News is best at assessing the case against TikTok—claim by claim. Scientific American argues banning TikTok will do absolutely nothing for data privacy. Wired has lots more on TikTok’s response to the allegations. CNN reminds us that Chinese apps are indeed creepy—and Tim Wu in the New York Times offers a clear and compelling argument for banning TikTok.
