Guest Columnist

John Richard Schrock


Bipartisan Bigotry on Tik Tok

 Use Google (or most other search engines) to look up information on shoes. Within minutes you will be bombarded with unsolicited advertisements for shoes. The U.S. allows commercial interests nearly unlimited access to citizen’s internet data, and harvesting of data is a major U.S. business. That includes not only our buying interests, but also genetic, biometric and geolocation information as well.

    Therefore the U.S. House of Representatives bipartisan bill compelling ByteDance, a Chinese company that owns Tik Tok, to divest in it or face a ban in app stores and U.S.-based web-hosting services, was beyond cynical. Tik Tok has nowhere the invasive surveillance capabilities of freewheeling U.S. commercial giants such as Facebook and over 400 U.S. data brokers.

    ByteDance may not be able to divest Tik Tok because it has unique algorithms that send videos to users based on their prior preferences. And it has 170 million users in the United States. These special algorithms mean China would require a security review before permitting ByteDance to sell it to outside owners. Meanwhile, U.S. media-trackers and data brokers are regularly selling American data overseas.

    Most young Americans oppose restrictions on Tik Tok, realizing there is far less danger from this medium than from far more invasive U.S. media. American “smart speakers” that listen in to our in-home conversations are a privacy invasion that would be little tolerated in Asia.

    In hearings a year ago, U.S. lawmakers claimed its short videos damaged children’s mental health. That was a profound irony. Tik Tok had added features to reduce the amount of screen time and improve parents’ ability to monitor their children’s use, which few American media-trackers will ever do. Tik Tok automatically applies a screen time limit of 60 minutes per day to all users younger than 18. Parents can allow more, but teenagers who hit the limit must enter a passcode to continue watching. Weekly updates are currently in place. Tik Tok also added “Family Pairing” so a youngster’s usage is directly linked to a parent’s phone. They consulted with the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital in establishing time limits. The company is also developing content controls so parents can filter words or videos they do not want their kids to watch.

    As for data security, Tik Tok spent more than $1.5 billion on “Project Texas”, a security project with about 1,500 employees and in contract with U.S. Oracle Corporation.

    In congressional hearings on March 23, 2023, the CEO of Tik Tok Shou Zi Chew, faced outright verbal abuse when his calm and clear explanations were ignored. He was continuously hounded as a Chinese Communist. He began his testimony with “We do not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government” and “we have been building what amounts to a firewall to seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access. The bottom line is this: American data stored on American soil, by an American company, overseen by American personnel.” Chew was straightforward. He stayed calm in the face of continued unsupported allegations and become a hero across Asia, from South Korea to Japan to Hong Kong and Singapore. He is a citizen of Singapore but it became evident that many legislators of both parties knew nothing about Singapore.

    Most vicious was the questioning from Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, who kept asking questions that had already been answered. However, the Joe McCarthy award for demagogery is likewise shared with Democrat panelists who also appeared deaf, uneducated and insulting.
   
    In 2020, then President Trump had signed an executive order to remove the Tik Tok app from all US stores, an action that got held up in court. Now he has reversed and speaks against removing Tik Tok. American media speculate his changed position is due to meeting with Jeff Yass, a billionaire conservative donor whose company supposedly has a 15 per cent stake in ByteDance.

    Only four states (California, Vermont, Oregon, and Texas) have data broker registration laws, which requires them to report the extent they track minors, exact geolocation, and data on reproductive healthcare. That leaves 46 states that do indeed have a problem on our completely open Internet. But Tik Tok is not the problem.

    Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and some other investors are interested in buying TikTok’s U.S. operation, adding another media-tracker of the American public. They would then be free to make it another extremely predatory media-tracker.