Is TikTok a Threat? Data Sovereignty, Algorithmic Influence, and the China Factor with Lindsay Gorman, Senior Fellow at GMF Tech
Lindsay Gorman, Senior Fellow and Managing Director of GMF Tech, The German Marshall Fund
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This week, A'ndre is joined by Lindsay Gorman, the Managing Director & Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s GMF Tech, to delve into the controversies surrounding TikTok and its implications for national security. Lindsay sheds light on ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, and discusses the concerns surrounding its data storage practices. A'ndre and Lindsay explore the concept of data sovereignty and discuss whether China can access ByteDance's data at will, and why it's different from how the U.S. Government engages with U.S.-based social media companies. Lindsay outlines the types of user data TikTok gathers, and touches upon how China can exploit this collected data. The conversation extends to China's history of leveraging social media platforms for targeting dissenters and the workings of TikTok's algorithms in content recommendation -- particularly with regards to misinformation and polarization. Lindsay offers insights into the likelihood of a TikTok divestiture (and why it's not a ban), legal challenges it might face, and the possibility of a U.S.-based firm acquiring TikTok. The discussion concludes with an examination of China's reaction to the scrutiny, and what Lindsay sees as the biggest myths surrounding TikTok.
KEY QUOTES
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH TIKTOK?
2:00 — “TikTok is an emblem of our failure to think about the potential national security threats that can come from social media platforms and in some ways it’s almost foolish that we can’t. We saw how actors like Russia were able to interfere in U.S. elections and elections around the world using platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Youtube, and it’d be foolish to think that we wouldn’t see the same thing when it comes to another social media app like TikTok. Why national security folks are really honing in on TikTok is that as TikTok has grown, it has transitioned from fun cat videos, memes, dance videos, and lip syncs, to a platform where there is political debate and political speech, much like the others. The big issue with TikTok is that it’s owned by a company ByteDance that is based in the PRC and is accountable to the Chinese Communist Party. We already have evidence of the CCP trying to interfere in U.S. elections, especially when there was a Chinese human rights activist or dissident on the ballot… with the ability to influence TikTok’s algorithm, to have massive amounts of data on the likes and dislikes of American voters, it’s just like handing the CCP a loaded gun.”
THE SEPARATION(???) OF GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS IN CHINA
5:25 — “Because it is based in China, in China you can’t really think of such a thing as a private company. It’s not like in the United States… where there really is a meaningful separation between the government and the private sector. In an autocratic one party system like the People’s Republic of China, that doesn’t really exist. Ultimately all companies like ByteDance act at the behest of the state.”
CHINA’S DATA ACCESSIBILITY
8:00 — “On the data access question, China has a national intelligence law that requires companies to hand over any data to the government without any legal standards. In the U.S., we have evidentiary standards. If the FBI wanted to access personal communications for an active terrorist threat, there are hoops it has to jump through, there is legal process. They have to meet evidentiary standards, of probable cause, of reasonable suspicion, and that’s an independent function of government, an independent branch.”
TIKTOK’S DATA COLLECTION AND INFLUENCE TACTICS
11:45 — “For most Americans, it’s not so much the types of data that’s being collected… it’s the precise combination of data and influence that makes the type of data that TikTok (and any other social media platform) is collecting so problematic. What is that data specifically? It’s what you respond well to, what you spend a lot of time viewing, how to influence you… it is learning your preferences and knowing what you want to see, and that is an incredible influence tool. Whether that information is stored in the U.S., Western Europe, or China itself — almost doesn’t matter as much as the ability that TikTok can use that information and push targeted propaganda towards you, me, or anyone using the platform because they know how to influence us. It’s a fair point to say that if Facebook or X wants to do the same thing, they might have the ability to do that too. What’s different is the ultimate accountability on who calls the shots on what content to push. All these social media platforms are making these content moderation decisions… and we know from reporting on TikTok, that they’ve used a ‘heating’ button, that some TikTok employees have access to, where they can choose to heat particular types of content, which means they press the button, and the content is forced to go viral. I don’t think we should give that weapon over to an entity which very much is trying to influence the conversation in the United States to promote its own propaganda and denigrate U.S. interest and public opinion around the world of the U.S.”
TIKTOK’S CASE ISN’T UNIQUE
25:15 — “What [we’re] really advocating for is a divestiture. It’s not about making Americans not able to use TikTok, it’s a popular platform, people should use it. It’s about divesting the control from the CCP, and this is something we do across the information space when there is a national security problem. This isn’t totally unique to TikTok. Just in the data security case, we have precedent. The dating app Grindr was partially owned by a Chinese entity, and CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, actually forced that ownership to divest for national security reasons. That didn’t mean that Grindr had to stop operating in the U.S.. Users were relatively unaffected. It just meant that ownership link, the idea that potentially the CCP could have access to some sensitive information on dating habits of some swaths of the American population was too big a national security risk.”
WHY IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIKTOK AND ELON’S X?
33:25 “What is different about the Chinese ownership than Elon Musk pushing his particular narratives and products, is that Elon Musk doesn’t have some kind of law where if the CCP wants him to do something, he has to do it… when it comes to a foreign actor who is deliberately trying to denigrate the U.S. position in the world, and trying to prop up its own autocratic system of government, with all the human rights abuses that entails, and degrade the global world order that does champion free expression and liberal democracy, that’s where I think we can’t have the fox guarding the hen house. There’s a bunch of nuance there, though. In addition to just Chinese ownership, the concept of influence matters too. If say 95% of Elon Musk’s wealth was tied up in China, that’d also be a potential national security issue, given his ownership of X / Twitter, that’d be a different degree from it being a Chinese company, but that is something you’d want to talk about from a national security angle.”
WHAT IF RUSSIA OWNED FACEBOOK?
43:30 — "We’ve had an instance not too long ago of an autocratic power in Russia that actively interfered and tried to sway a U.S. Election. We’ve seen evidence of China learning from Russian tactics. Matt Schrader posits the thought experiment of ‘what if Russia owned Facebook in 2016?’ What could they have done then? This sort of failure of imagination about that ownership. We have the example in Russia, and we also have examples of China itself trying to influence U.S. Elections… there was a case in New York not too long ago where Chinese security agents actually tried to get information and even manufacture negative information about one candidate trying to run for New York federal office, in order to make him lose… I think anyone who’s saying that this is fear-mongering, and there’s no intent to interfere in U.S. elections, I would point them to these examples”.