With its inventive videos and bizarre memes, TikTok once billed itself as “the last sunny corner on the Internet.” Since launching five years ago, the app has become a global sensation, amassing millions of users every year.
Despite delighting consumers and advertisers, others believe the “sunny” app has a dark side. As ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok and is headquartered in China — a nation whose government is known for surveillance and propaganda — its ownership has triggered fear about it becoming a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tool for tracking people worldwide and censoring content.
Due to national security concerns, India made the first move to ban TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in 2020. On Dec. 5, Taiwan barred the app on public-sector devices, followed by the US Senate unanimously approving a bill on Wednesday last week to prohibit federal government employees from downloading the Chinese app.
There have also been calls to censor or ban the app in the private sector. Minister Without Portfolio and Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said more public discussion is needed to determine whether Taiwan should draft laws to completely ban the use of TikTok across the nation, as India and other countries have done.
While some legislators warmed to the idea of extending the ban from government employees to everyone, it also attracted ferocious opposition, with the main argument being that it would undermine democracy and freedom of speech.
However, as a nation under constant Chinese threat, the government has all the more responsibility to look out for the potential dangers and threats of TikTok, more so than India or even the US. The app is most popular among teenagers, who use it as a main source of news and entertainment, which heavily influences their outlook on the world.
As nations have pointed out, TikTok allows China to manipulate what the app’s vast foreign users can see. The threat is not about the harvesting of user data, but what its users learn from it. As the app’s algorithm was developed in Beijing, a tweak here or there could give more traction to videos in line with Chinese propaganda.
It is easy to stumble upon false information on the app, such as videos implying that Ukraine is at fault for its invasion by Russia. It also censors content that is politically sensitive to the Chinese government, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Tibet and Taiwan. For an age group that is susceptible to manipulation, the app is a perfect tool for spreading pro-China ideology, propaganda and could influence national identity.
On a deeper linguistic level, along with the influence of other Chinese social media platforms, many Taiwanese have started using “Chinese” Mandarin in daily speech, such as saying “shipin” (視頻) rather than the more common “yingpian” (影片) when referring to “videos” in Taiwan.
In the words of US Senator Ted Cruz, TikTok is “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist Party can use to influence what Americans see, hear and ultimately think.” There is no denying that TikTok, if left unchecked, could present a risk to Taiwan, especially among young people without the experience to tell true from false.
Without new safety mechanisms or other regulating measures, TikTok could easily become another seemingly innocuous yet powerful tool in China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. As one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, the government cannot afford to ignore the risks. While protecting freedom of speech, it also has to ensure that communication tools do not end up becoming the enemy’s fodder to chip away at Taiwan’s democracy and national identity.
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