TikTok is in hot water, again. Internal meeting recordings obtained by BuzzFeed News revealed that Chinese employees of the short-video platform’s parent company, ByteDance, were still able to access data from the US despite promises that they wouldn’t. It’s reasonable to assume that Australians’ data is also within their grasp.
So, should you, perhaps as one of the millions of Australians addicted to the platform, be personally concerned about where your data is going? Probably.
It’s old news to most that many companies are trying to collect as much data as possible about each of us at any given moment. From the companies you know about — such as Google and Facebook’s parent company, Meta — to the data brokers who you’ve never heard of — like Acxiom or Quantium buying and selling enormous amounts of information — they’re all trying to make money by selling access to certain groups of people.
When you use any online service, when you swipe your rewards card, when you walk past a digital billboard, you leave digital breadcrumbs that are being reverse engineered to create a virtual representation of you, usually in the pursuit of selling you things.
To many, that’s disturbing. But the contradiction of modern life is that we also agree to this happening to us — although it’s contested the extent to which our consent to be surveilled and profiled is both informed and volunteered. After all, let’s be honest, it’s not possible to live an ordinary life while also opting out of anything that could possibly track you.
The nightmarish omnipresence of surveillance capitalism doesn’t mean you should be apathetic about TikTok, which, as cyber firm Internet 2.0 co-CEO Robert Potter told Crikey, presents a much more significant risk. While he agrees that our data is siphoned by everyone, companies that reside within China present a larger risk due to the government’s weaponisation of data that is distinct from Western countries.
“[China] has this weird arrangement where they like to encourage innovation, but the government can never really leave social media companies alone,” he said.
Potter explains that the Chinese government takes a “mosaic” approach to data collection, drawing in huge amounts of data on an individual when it targets them, compared with Australian government bodies who are bound by a much narrower, warrant-based approach. Chinese national security laws compel companies like ByteDance or WeChat, the owner of a mega-popular messaging app, to carry out whatever request the government asks them to — including handing over data on users.
The other aspect is how TikTok can be used to shape discussions outside of China. Potter points to platform censorship around Hong Kong or Xinjiang as proof of how the company, beholden to the Chinese government’s values, can restrict speech elsewhere.
Ultimately, Potter predicts that countries like the US, UK and Australia will end up banning these Chinese social media platforms: “Their norms aren’t democratic. We’re feeding huge amounts of information about our kids into these platforms.”
Until we reach that point, Australian TikTok users should assume that whatever the app knows about them — your location, interests and biometric data like your face and voice — is also known to the Chinese government. Whether that’s enough to wean you off the app is ultimately up to you.
Here’s a radical proposition: that a life lived in the total absence of social media is better, happier and more fulfilling.
If you don’t believe me, try it for a month or two. If, at the end, you don’t agree, then by all means reinstate the platforms in your life. At least you will have confirmed their value to you: you won’t just be the modern-day equivalent of a mindless drone.
If you do agree, then by exorcising them, you are striking your own small blow for freedom.
I smelled a rat with Facebook twelve years ago, and gave it up. I’ve never gone on Twitter, nor TikTok (although friends keep sending me funny pet clips). I don’t think my life’s much the poorer for this decision. By the way, the last time I wrote about this back in 2016, a lot of Crikey commenters got very upset. Go figure.
Cam, I have some bad news for you if you think it’s only the Chinese who have national security laws compelling companies to carry out whatever request the government asks them to – see for example in Australia section 9 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and section 313 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 – including handing over data on users.
Well, it a good thing we have privacy legislation then. Privacy legislation is completely ineffective joke because of the provisions allowing data collectors to get our ‘consent’ to misuse of our personal data and to ubiquitous surveillance. That consent is buried in the slabs of text to which we must agree, without dissension, to access any system or any app. Hands up anyone who has read any of those conditions. But the law of contract is so draconian that agreement is sealed by a dishonest acknowledgement that we have read the mortifyingly prolix and boring terms and conditions and hitting a button that we ‘agree’. But the genie is now well and truly out of the bottle and Zuckerberg arrogantly declared, imprudently thinking aloud, there is now no such thing as privacy.
While we have the likes of Peter Dutton and various unrestrained spooks around in govt you can bet our data is being hawked around to anyone and everyone for any purpose whatsoever. There is no law that can protect anyone from a morally bankrupt politician or public servant.
I’m more concerned that the Yanks (The EVIL EMPIRE) and our spooks have our data.
Agree John
Holly mackerel – “China present a larger risk due to the government’s weaponisation of data that is distinct from Western countries.” How is the risk larger? Facts not fantasy and bias. Are almost as bad as the CIA? China has never organised a regime change in Australia but the CIA has – not to mention a multitude of other countries throughout the World. I think the consequences of their actions may be influencing our foreign policy today.