I'm curious about the boards thoughts on this topic. It's something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. As a parent I'm not a fan of TikTok. It seems to be pretty addictive, though that's true of most forms of social media. TikTok just seems better at it.
In terms of privacy, they seem to have made genuine efforts at giving users more control. But by default they're still a social media company and will do all they can to vacuum up user data. The difference between Twitter/Meta and TikTok is the controlling relationship they have with an adversarial government. They've made sworn statements to Congress regarding where user data is stored and who it may be accessed by, only to have those statements later undermined.
In my view, this presents national security concerns on two fronts. First, it theoretically could give China an extraordinary view into life patterns of Americans. Essentially they have 80M+ Americans acting as human sensors. I'm not certain if this is a legitimate concern or just overwrought catastrophizing, but it's certainly something that needs to be discussed. The second concern is the platforms ability to promote narratives that may inorganic. IOW, they have a propaganda machine plugged directly into a very suggestible population. This article by Rep Mike Gallagher does a good job of illustrating this point:
So what to do with TikTok? India banned it. Trump tried to and it didn't happen. Biden administration doesn't seem to interested in going there. One thing that I've thought about but really haven't seen discussed is whether the US could ban TikTok on trade grounds as a retaliatory measure for China's ban on Google, Twitter, Meta, YouTube and other software companies. It seems as if the discussion is always focused on National Security, which I understand, but there seems to be a matter of fairness and reciprocal treatment that should be addressed. I'm not an international trade expert so I'm interested in thoughts on why this avenue hasn't been pursued. I feel like I'd be much more tolerant of TikTok in the US if our companies had similar access to the Chinese market.
In terms of privacy, they seem to have made genuine efforts at giving users more control. But by default they're still a social media company and will do all they can to vacuum up user data. The difference between Twitter/Meta and TikTok is the controlling relationship they have with an adversarial government. They've made sworn statements to Congress regarding where user data is stored and who it may be accessed by, only to have those statements later undermined.
In my view, this presents national security concerns on two fronts. First, it theoretically could give China an extraordinary view into life patterns of Americans. Essentially they have 80M+ Americans acting as human sensors. I'm not certain if this is a legitimate concern or just overwrought catastrophizing, but it's certainly something that needs to be discussed. The second concern is the platforms ability to promote narratives that may inorganic. IOW, they have a propaganda machine plugged directly into a very suggestible population. This article by Rep Mike Gallagher does a good job of illustrating this point:
According to a Harvard/Harris poll, 51 percent of Americans ages 18–24 believe Hamas was justified in its brutal terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli citizens on October 7.
I read that statistic at a time where I thought I’d lost the capacity to be shocked. For weeks, I’ve seen the clips and read the firsthand stories documenting Hamas’s atrocities: burned bodies, decapitated babies, raped women, children tied together with their parents, mutilated corpses. I’d seen the rallies on elite campuses celebrating Hamas’s murderous cause, the faculty letters excusing the terrorists. I thought I had grasped the extent of the moral rot. I thought I had seen the bottom.
But I hadn’t.
How did we reach a point where a majority of young Americans hold such a morally bankrupt view of the world? Where many young Americans were rooting for terrorists who had kidnapped American citizens—and against a key American ally? Where were they getting the raw news to inform this upside-down world view?
The short answer is, increasingly, via social media and predominantly TikTok. TikTok is not just an app teenagers use to make viral dance videos. A growing number of Americans rely on it for their news. Today, TikTok is the top search engine for more than half of Gen Z, and about six in ten Americans are hooked on the app before their seventeenth birthday. And it is controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, and in China there is no such thing as a private company. As if to underscore the point, ByteDance’s chief editor, Zhang Fuping, is also the boss of the company’s internal Communist Party cell.
I read that statistic at a time where I thought I’d lost the capacity to be shocked. For weeks, I’ve seen the clips and read the firsthand stories documenting Hamas’s atrocities: burned bodies, decapitated babies, raped women, children tied together with their parents, mutilated corpses. I’d seen the rallies on elite campuses celebrating Hamas’s murderous cause, the faculty letters excusing the terrorists. I thought I had grasped the extent of the moral rot. I thought I had seen the bottom.
But I hadn’t.
How did we reach a point where a majority of young Americans hold such a morally bankrupt view of the world? Where many young Americans were rooting for terrorists who had kidnapped American citizens—and against a key American ally? Where were they getting the raw news to inform this upside-down world view?
The short answer is, increasingly, via social media and predominantly TikTok. TikTok is not just an app teenagers use to make viral dance videos. A growing number of Americans rely on it for their news. Today, TikTok is the top search engine for more than half of Gen Z, and about six in ten Americans are hooked on the app before their seventeenth birthday. And it is controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, and in China there is no such thing as a private company. As if to underscore the point, ByteDance’s chief editor, Zhang Fuping, is also the boss of the company’s internal Communist Party cell.
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