TikTok, a social media platform owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has come under fire from lawmakers in Washington, D.C. The bill, which was signed into effect on April 24, includes a provision that would require ByteDance to sell its social media app within the next nine to 12 months or be banned in the United States. The ban will take at least a year to go into effect, and will likely take longer due to legal issues, according to the Associated Press.
Those advocating banning TikTok cite multiple reasons, with national security at the forefront. Another reason they are seeking a ban on TikTok is data security.
The fact that this platform is owned by a Chinese company and could be exploited by the Chinese government is a legitimate national security concern. However, the idea that TikTok is a data security threat is completely unfounded, given that there are many other apps that have equal or greater access to user data.
How much data does TikTok have?
TikTok currently has about 170 million users in the United States. When someone opens an account, TikTok collects personally identifiable information such as the user's name, age, language, email, phone number, social media account information, and profile picture. This is very similar to other popular social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.
Also, like other social media apps, TikTok stores user activity data and collects information about purchases made on the app, contact list, and messages sent via the platform. TikTok acknowledges on its privacy policy page that it automatically collects usage and device information, location data, image and audio information, metadata, and cookies.
TikTok: Very important when it comes to data collection
Sure, TikTok may be collecting a lot of data, but when you compare TikTok's data policies to Facebook and Instagram's Meta policies, they all seem surprisingly similar. What is not similar is the number of users. According to Meta's 2023 Q4 earnings report, Facebook had 205 million daily active users in the U.S. and Canada at the end of last year. Add to this that he has over 150 million US users on Instagram, not to mention Threads and WhatsApp, and it's easy to see how much data Meta has.
And that's just one company. Google, Apple, Amazon, and all these platforms, not to mention the thousands of consumer apps Americans use for entertainment, shopping, wellness, and the collaborative apps many of us have on our phones. collects user data. TikTok doesn't account for a single drop in this vast collection of data. In fact, Security.org gave Google her F rating when rating the largest technology companies on data policies. “Of all the companies on this list, Google collects and stores the most information by far.” (Notably, Facebook received a C and Apple received an A+. To do).
As Rep. Sarah Jacobs of California made clear after a briefing on the bill, “What we heard in today's classified briefing was not unique to TikTok.”
Opinions from data security and technology experts
The main issue when comparing the amount of data held by TikTok to these other big tech platforms and social media giants is that TikTok is owned by China. But the reality is that China can just as easily access Americans' data without the app.
In a recent report in Scientific American, Kate Ruane, an attorney at the Center for Democracy and Technology, highlights how ineffective the ban on TikTok is from a data security perspective, stating: . “Data from China and other countries,” Luan said. “So many applications and social media services are collecting our data and constantly selling or leaking it to the world.”
In the same article, Karrie Schroeder, senior counsel at the nonprofit Epic.org (Electronic Privacy Information Center), called the ban a form of security theater and said that lawmakers believe banning TikTok solves real problems. He said that he fully understands that this is not something he should do. . “China won't lose anything important by abolishing TikTok today.” [amount] It's part of Americans' personal information,” Schroeder said.
If banning TikTok is not the solution, then what is?
U.S. lawmakers may have legitimate arguments for banning or forcing the sale of social media apps, including national interest and regulatory concerns, but banning TikTok on data privacy grounds against China It won't work to do that.
So what's the answer? There are arguments for stricter consumer privacy laws that apply to all social media sites and technology platforms. Transparency is essential for platforms that collect user data, letting users know exactly what data is being collected and how it will be used. It's important for businesses to have complete visibility into what data is being uploaded, stored, and shared across the company's cloud-based app environment by their IT or security teams.
After all, the digital ecosystem is so large and contains so much personally identifiable information that banning one social media app over data security concerns will have no impact. Not at all. Without action on policies and tactics that could actually create positive change, it could cause more harm and even open the door to more bans.