The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

Author:Jacob Helberg [Helberg, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: computers, Security, General, internet, Search Engines, political science, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781982144456
Google: R9sYEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2021-10-12T23:19:33.139970+00:00

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A similar story is playing out with TikTok, the short-form video app that has been called “ ‘Star Search’ crossed with ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ ”93 The wildly popular app has been downloaded more than two billion times around the world,94 and counts nearly 100 million American users—many of them teens. Like Grindr, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, Beijing-based ByteDance.

TikTok’s users delight in silly clips of themselves dancing and cooking. But its capabilities extend beyond frivolous footage. Each of the millions of videos uploaded to the app could potentially be grist for refining facial recognition algorithms, allowing Chinese developers to build out their databases of non-Asian faces and voices. In addition to recording which videos you watch and any messages you send on the app, TikTok’s privacy policy states that it may collect your location, your contacts, your phone number, and other personal data. This information may be shared “with a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group.”95

And that’s what TikTok admits publicly. One security researcher found that TikTok transmits an “abnormal” volume of information to its servers, as much as half a megabyte—or 125 pages of typed data—in less than 10 seconds.96 Researchers have also discovered that TikTok was accessing the contents of smartphone clipboards—where users might paste sensitive information like passwords—every few seconds, which one Israeli researcher calls “very concerning and very rare.”97 These revelations come in spite of a number of technical steps the app’s developers appear to have taken to make it difficult for researchers to determine what information it’s vacuuming up.98

In June 2021, a group of former TikTok employees reportedly said “the boundaries between TikTok and ByteDance were so blurry as to be almost nonexistent.”99 Alarmingly, one employee claimed that ByteDance employees “are able to access U.S. user data.”100

On top of the data TikTok collects is what it does—or doesn’t—display. TikTok professes to be uncomfortable with political content, which has led the app allegedly to censor or flag clips featuring everything from Make America Great Again hats to #BlackLivesMatter content.101 TikTok has reportedly removed videos of Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,102 and content critical of the government’s treatment of Uyghurs.103 One young woman cleverly circumvented censors with a series of viral “makeup tutorials,” in which she begins by offering tips to getting long eyelashes before pivoting to educate viewers about the plight of the Uyghurs.104

Conversely, the app seemingly privileges pro-China content, which has even led teens in America to attempt to boost their profiles by posting tongue-in-cheek videos praising President Xi. One Texas TikToker saw his number of fans increase from 2,000 to 90,000 after he posted a clip playing China’s national anthem and calling Xi “my president.”105

With so much control over content, what’s to stop TikTok from wading into U.S. elections? Stratechery’s Ben Thomas speculates that “TikTok could promote a particular candidate or a particular issue in a particular geography, without anyone—except perhaps the candidate, now indebted to a Chinese company—knowing.”106

Perhaps learning from the cautionary tale

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