In a rare bipartisan move, the US Congress has passed a landmark bill that could lead to a ban for TikTok in America. The controversial bill not only gives ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, nine months to sell its stake or the app will be blocked in the United States, but it also exposes a complex mess of hypocrisy and double standards.
Bans, protections and regulation:
In China:
A domestic version of TikTok called called Douyin is available to Chinese consumers. The apps are nearly identical — but with one critical difference: users under 14 are required to use Douyin in healthy moderation on “teenage mode.” Young, impressionable users are limited to 40 minutes a day between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. to ensure they get adequate sleep. Endless zombie-like scrolling is interrupted by mandatory 5-second delays. They’re also only shown specially-selected “inspiring” content.
The public in China don’t really have any choice. Restrictions and protections are not optional.
In America:
While the politicians are skeptical of TikTok’s Chinese ownership and are threatening a ban, American consumers are not as keen on the idea.
A survey by Surfshark has shown that the majority (around two-thirds) of American TikTok users don’t want TikTok banned. Only 19% of Gen Z would support the ban, while 43% of millennial respondents indicated at least partial agreement. Only half of Americans who use TikTok know about TikTok’s Chinese ownership.
Politicians could seek to introduce restrictions (age gating or time limits) but have chosen not to.
Elsewhere:
In Europe, the EU has introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA) to prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation. Big social media firms are no longer allowed to target children with advertising based on their personal data or cookies. Instead they will be required to prove that they have redesigned their systems to ensure a “high level of privacy, security and safety of minors”.
In Australia, they have even introduced measured to curb anonymity, making it possible to expose trolls and spreaders of misinformation as well as to age gate users.
If the objective is to protect our children from harmful content and society at large from misinformation, then this can be done. The measures in Australia to curb anonymity could easily be adopted elsewhere. This would also allow societies to introduce and enforce age gating as they have done in China.
In his latest book, “The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring Of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic Of Mental Illness,” Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership and bestselling author, has explained how parents are over-protecting children offline and under-protecting them online. Offline unwarranted fears of abduction are limiting unsupervised free play and risk taking (falling off a bike, having the odd fight, etc – that is essential to developing social skills) as well as team sports (also essential). Meanwhile unsupervised or unrestricted tech is too often used to keep kids entertained.
In many Western countries bans or restrictions are seen as a limit on personal freedoms. For example while UK schools do not allow mobile phones in class (all phones are handed in at the start of the school day and collected before kids go home), in the US parents insist that kids have phones and are contactable at all times. This has meant that kids are all too frequently using their phones to access social media or the internet in class, impacting their ability to concentrate on what they should be learning. There is also psychological impact with content moderation failing to curb cyber bullying and social arms on social media.
While Tiktok, Instagram and WhatsApp, the top apps used by children, nominally have a minimum age limit of 13, this is not enforced. A report from Ofcom (the Office of Communications) – which oversees TV, radio and internet services in the UK – found that nearly one quarter of five to seven-year-olds have a smartphone and that a rising numbers of these youngsters are already using social media. Haidt has suggested that smartphones should be restricted and social media should not be allowed until kids are 15.
Rather than focusing on a TikTok ban, politicians should be looking to follow Australia’s curbs on anonymity so that effective age gating can be introduced for all social media platforms. Smart phones should be banned in all schools and measures like the EU Digital Services Act introduced to prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation. If the tech giants don’t do enough to redesign their systems and improve their content moderation to ensure a “high level of privacy, security and safety of minors,” then their section 230 protections should be repealed.
Currently under section 230 social media platforms are regulated like telephone companies and not held responsible for the content that they distribute, but if they fail to self regulate to eliminate harmful and misleading content then they could become regulated like newspapers or publishers.
Sovereignty, surveillance and ownership:
In China:
The state is able to monitor all social media activity. Along with other mass surveillance measures this is used as part of a social credit system expands that impacts all aspects of life, judging citizens’ behaviour and trustworthiness.
Chinese citizens are blocked from accessing Western social media channels.
And while it is feared that the Chinese can use TikTok to surveil users in other nations, this is largely theoretical and the Chinese lack the capability to conduct mass surveillance beyond their own borders.
In America:
In what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history,” the Senate has passed the ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)” that does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The NSA is therefore able to continue using secret FISA warrants to conduct mass surveillance of citizens in the USA and most of the rest of the world (except China where US social media platforms do not operate).
Elsewhere:
While members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) share intelligence, the NSA is the only one able to conduct mass surveillance.
Campaigners and certain politicians within the EU have complained that the US has failed to live up to its promises under the revised Privacy Shield arrangement to respect the privacy rights of EU citizens enshrined under GDPR.
Other countries, including US allies, have also expressed privacy concerns.
Another motivation for the TikTok ban is the fear of mass surveillance by the Chinese. This is somewhat misplaced. All of TikTok’s US data is hosted by Oracle a US company. Any attempts to regularly sift through this data to conduct mass surveillance would quickly be spotted by Oracle. US citizens however are actively surveilled by their own government. Indeed the US government has the most widespread international surveillance program in the world. Under the RISAA and FISA arrangements the NSA is able to surveil not only its own citizens, but also those of its allies and many others elsewhere. Ironically, given that the US is seeking to an TikTok, its is China’s effective ban on US social media channels that makes its citizens about the only ones to avoid the NSA program.
I have argued that while we need to accept that our own national law enforcement agencies need to be able to obtain warrants under effective independent judicial supervision to conduct investigations, we should not accept extra-territorial measures or cross border surveillance. If this means a ban for TikTok unless it conforms to US demands, or a global ban on US tech giants unless there is real FISA reform and respect for GDPR etc, then so be it.
