Latest Report From Forbes Suggests TikTok Has Deep Ties To The Chinese Government
Once again, I am writing about all things related to TikTok. In the past two days, TikTok has by far received a lot of press, but raising concerns about its data practices and ties to China. According to a Forbes post, 330 current TikTok and ByteDance employees used to work for Chinese state media, and some still do.
I read through thoroughly to look at the implications and came away with some takeaways from it. It is true that LinkedIn lists information about these employees and who they are currently working for. However, there is only so much of that information is reliable.
A source interviewed for that piece made observations about the connections from current employees at TikTok. Specifically, the Director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International studies, Jame Lewis, confirmed that it was a normal career path to go from a state agency to the private sector because the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance pays more. Of course it does raise concerns to see how many have been employed by Chinese state agencies and are now part of the popular app TikTok.
Why the ties to China continue to cause apprehension
The question that came to my mind was about existing social media apps to China? The Forbes analysis showed that 23 profiles represent current or former employees from YouTube or Google had been employed by the Chinese government. In addition, 14 profiles of current employees from Meta (forever known as Facebook) and Instagram worked for China as well.
What is raising concerns is the fact that there are a lot profiles currently working at ByteDance and TikTok, which have ties to China. The number is far larger compared to the existing list for U.S-based social media companies. But can the same be said about employees who worked for Google, YouTube, Facebook and others to have ties to the United States? Food for thought for all of us.
Today the New York Times published two articles on the front page for TikTok. What does that mean?
Because I am active on the app, I monitor what is trending and connect with hundreds of users daily. Naturally, I used my perspective as a teacher and journalist to raise awareness about what is happening while bringing a positive experience to those who find my videos.
I have to data amassed 400k followers. Here you can have a look at the type content I published daily below.
Back to the NY Times articles, it looks like TikTok is not immune to misinformation. The headline of the one article was “On TikTok, Election Misinformation Thrives Ahead of Midterms,” and the other is “How Frustration Over TikTok Has Mounted In Washington.” I will tell you we’ve been here before. As I have told people many times in person or online, they never accept my advice I publish on platforms or tell them in person, to make sure to check a variety of sources. Or to just Google it to make sure they have done research on the topic connected to the candidate within the larger context of an election.
The article above confirmed that TikTok seems to be using a similar playbook when dealing with fake videos and fake news. It relies on algorithms and moderators. But many reports are coming out about the exploitation and the lack of transparency about its practices.
The second article, is once again about the data practices and access by the Chinese government of user data from the United States. If we are to take action against TikTok solely it is a political agenda. Because we are all aware that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and others are harvesting data from all of us here and from abroad.
If government officials are going tackle the issue perhaps a comprehensive piece of legislation should be introduced to govern how social media apps operate. Because when you think about how many fake pieces of news or content circulates on all of these platforms it begs the question when will enforcement happen and when will some new data privacy law guarantee the safety of data from users.
