is TikTok a threat?
Is TikTok a threat to users or governments? I take the difficult side of this and side with those who are highly concerned about this platform.
There is a lot of noise in this discussion, since technology policy issues are often fraught with misunderstandings and mischaracterizations. There are technical and politcal considerations at play, as well as human and civil rights issues to consider.
The US Courts have found that a national security concern outweighs the interests of this company and its users, hence an upcoming ban that was in dispute is legal. The president-elect was pushing for the parent company, Bytedance, to divest ownership during his first term, and pushed to have the company sold to his billionaire friend and longtime donor Larry Ellison's company Oracle. He changed his mind recently when he met with and subsequently got a large contribution from a stakeholder in Bytedance earlier this year.
A major poliical factor is Meta, considered by many to be the principal competitor. Meta has been actively lobbying the US Congress supporting this ban on national security grounds. To be fair Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and others gather enormous amounts of user-specific data to use building profiles that they monetize in various ways.
The argument that allowing a Chinese-owned company this much personalized user data about US citizens seems hypocritical when you realize the extraordinary latitude given these US tech companies to play fast and loose with user-generated and user-specific data. It should spark outrage among constituent that these same legislators who call for a TikTok ban refuse to institute common-sense reforms for regulating the data broker industry and to protect the privacy interests of American citizens.
I believe that there is sufficient danger here that does warrant at least close scrutiny and debate, perhaps more. Companies in China must comply with government orders to share anything that's requested; they don't have strong legal protections.
How much of a problem is this? It depends. Most people seem to characterize the threat as exactly like that posed by Facebook, only with the user data exposed to the Chinese Government instead of the USG. I think that's essentially right, hence my view that all the major social media platforms should be required to open their algorithms to public scrutiny.
If Facebook changes the algorithm controlling what I see on my wall every 8 seconds, FB should be required to post that new algorithm every 8 seconds in public view. If twitter/X algorithm shows me a stream of random posts from people I follow interleaved with racist content, I'd like that to be disclosed in an open fashion. Consumer sites would soon keep track of this, and evaluate the choices for consumers.
The specific issue at hand in the courts is actually concerning this technical thing called section 230, which gives protections to these platforms and distinguishes them from "publishers" of content who have editorial control. The correct interpretation here IMO is that Section 230 should give protection for content (e.g. a platform like X is not responsible for user-posted content) but should NOT protect the algorithms used to choose which content gets displayed when and where.