The Trade Corrupt Practices of TikTok and China’s Social Media (Censorship) Policy: The Case in the U.S.

There is Chinese ownership of the company that owns TikTok. Schumer told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that there are people in the Commerce Committee looking into that. We will see where they come out.

The bill proposes to block transactions by social media companies in the US with more than one million monthly users who are based in, or under the influence of, a foreign country that is considered a foreign adversary.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order effectively banning TikTok within the United States. The ban was never enforced after TikTok sued.

The allegation against TikTok is that the company poses a national security risk. US officials have worried that the Chinese government could pressure TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, into handing over the personal information of its US users, which could then be used for Chinese intelligence operations or the spreading of Chinese-backed disinformation.

The Information Security of the United States: High-Precision Report from the Joint Commission on Foreign Investment and Trade in the U.S.A.

The agreement under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States will address security concerns raised by both the federal and state level. “These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”

In his testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this week, he will address the question of whether the app can be trusted because of its Chinese ownership. The news that TikTok has 150 million users in the United States was reported by news outlets based on information from his testimony. He observes that almost half of the US comes to TikTok. The majority of them are small and medium businesses.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. The daily digest is about the evolving media landscape.

It’s widespread usage is frightening government officials. FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that the app could be used to control users’ devices.

The Senate-passed bill would provide exceptions for “law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security researchers.”

The Red Scare of TikTok: How the Chinese Government can stop a Facebook app that hides its user’s personal information

TikTok had a billion monthly users in 2021, it said. The majority of teens in the US use it, according to the research center.

While the company denies it would ever be used for nefarious purposes, national security experts say China-based businesses usually have to give unfettered access to the authoritarian regime if information is ever sought.

The ban on federal government devices is anIncremental restriction, due to the lack of political will or courts stopping them.

Yet the panic about TikTok is overblown. While some data concerns exist—though none more extreme than those over any US-based social media platforms—policies and discourse around TikTok in politics amount to a modern-day Red Scare. American politicians seem keen to point fingers at China for a lack of data security without holding a mirror up to themselves, as they keep allowing Big Tech lobbyists to quash any meaningful attempts at federal social media regulation. Without a federal ban on TikTok throughout the United States, it is impossible to put the application back into the box. There are TikTok bans that will do more harm than good.

US officials are concerned about the possibility that the Chinese government will make ByteDance hand over user information for intelligence or disinformation purposes. Independent security experts have said that access could be a possibility, though there has been no reported incident yet.

“While social media companies are certainly harvesting all kinds of data about users, I think it’s usually overblown to what extent they ‘know’ about users on an individual level,” he said.

Patil said if TikTok users are worried about their privacy, he suggests restricting posts to friends only and to remove location data from videos, which can be done in the app’s settings.

The video app TikTok has faith in the process of making sure that it doesn’t get influenced by the Chinese government, Oberwetter said.

Another possible resolution is that the committee is satisfied with the steps TikTok has taken to ensure there is a firewall between U.S. user data and ByteDance employees in Beijing and the Chinese government.

CFIUS deliberations are famously secretive and happen behind closed doors. It’s not known when and which way the committee will end its investigation.

The Times are Coming: The Time to Ban Byte Dance from China’s Geometrically-Controlled App Store Stores for Good

Fourteen states have recently banned the application from being used on government devices, as well as some state-run universities blocking the app on their campuses.

Byte Dance is needed by Chinese law to assist the government, which means sharing user data from anywhere in the world.

There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a puppet company. “It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”

“It certainly makes sense, then, for U.S. soldiers to be told, ‘Hey, don’t use the app because it might share your location information with other entities,” said Chander. The weather app is one of many apps that are in your phone even if they’re not owned by China.

Ryan Calo is a professor at the University of Washington. According to him, the proposed legislation still needs improvement, but it’s more about tensions in the region and less about TikTok.

“Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S. Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks,” Warner said in a statement Tuesday. We need a comprehensive approach that tackles proactively sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America so we don’t rush to catch up when they’re already ubiquitous.

It’s easy to say that a foreign government is a threat and that’s what happens around the world. “I think that we should be careful about how politicized that can be in a way that is far above the actual threat in order to achieve political ends.”

Tech Industry Lobbying: The Case for a Better Way to Protect Privacy in the United States, and Implications for the First Amendment

Even if an official ban on TikTok were to move forward, it would raise First Amendment concerns, as both Chander and Calo are skeptical that it would gain much political traction. Calo believes the conversation could push policy in a positive direction.

“I think we’re right in the United States to be thinking about the consequences of having so much commercial data gathering taking place of US citizens and residents,” he said. “We need to do something about it, but not in a way that’s meaningless, but in a way that protects people’s privacy, and the FTC seems very interested in doing that.”

Tech giants have repeatedly deployed their CEOs to Capitol Hill, who in some cases have made arguments citing the threat of Chinese competition. They’ve also leaned on help from trade associations they’re members of and relied on advertising campaigns to make the case against some of the biggest legislative threats to their business.

The tech industry’s largest players have faced a kitchen sink of allegations in recent years. From knee-capping nascent rivals; to harming children and mental health; to undermining democracy; to spreading hate speech and harassment; to censoring conservative viewpoints; to bankrupting local news outlets; Big Tech has been made out as one of Washington’s largest villains.

Beckerman told CNN that a lot of the concerns are overblown, but that they can be solved through the government negotiations.

Public records show ByteDance had 17 lobbyists and spent $270,000 on lobbying in 2019. The company’s lobbyist count doubled and it spent over $5 million on lobbying by the end of last year.

Meta was the biggest internet industry lobbying giant last year, spending upward of $20 million. Next was $19 million, followed by $10 million. Almost 10 times the amount was spent by the parent of TikTok, which is number four on the list.

Supporters of AICOA called on Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer to bring the bill to a floor vote for a long time this year. Tech lobbying and doubts about whether the bill had the votes made it hard for it to get the floor time its supporters wanted. One bill that would have required Apple to allow iPhone users to download apps on any website, not just its own app store was killed off.

For a brief moment this month, lawmakers seemed poised to pass a bill that could force Meta, Google and other platforms to pay news organizations a larger share of ad revenues. Meta warned that it could be forced to pull its news content from its platforms if the bill passed.

Do We Live in the 21st Century? The Media Landscape of the 20th Century and the Challenges of Regulating the Tech Sector

Silicon Valley’s biggest players have excelled in Washington, defending their turf from lawmakers eager to knock them down a peg.

By contrast, decisions about the rules government might impose on tech platforms have called into question how those regulations may affect different parts of the economy, from small businesses to individual users to the future of the internet itself.

In some cases, as with proposals to revise the tech industry’s decades-old content moderation liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, legislation may raise First Amendment issues as well as partisan divisions. Democrats have said Section 230 should be changed because it gives social media companies a pass to leave some hate speech and offensive content unaddressed, while Republicans have called for changes to the law so that platforms can be pressured to remove less content.

The technical challenges of regulating an entire sector of technology combined with cross-cutting politics make it difficult for lawmakers to reach an accord.

It’s really important to establish a Republican brand. A central tenet of what unites Republicans now is taking a strong stance [and] standing up to China,” says Thad Kousser, professor of political science at U.C. San Diego.

Higher education and academics use social media to research and teach. The app has fundamentally changed the nature of modern communication with its aesthetics, practices, storytelling, and information-sharing.

From an educational standpoint, how are media and communications professors supposed to train students to be savvy content creators and consumers if we can’t teach a pillar of the modern media landscape? While students can certainly still access TikTok within the privacy of their own homes, professors can no longer put TikToks into PowerPoint slides or show TikTok links via classroom web browser. Brands, companies, and novel forms of storytelling all rely on TikTok, and professors will no longer be able to train their students in best practices for these purposes. TikTok makes it easier for students to learn things in real time, which makes parts of the world more accessible.

The world keeps turning as these states implement their bans, leaving their citizens disadvantaged in a fast-paced media world. Media and communications students from the states will be at a disadvantage in applying for jobs, as their peers from other states will be able to receive education and training, while the media and communication students from the states are not.

Professors also must do research. Social media scholars in these states quite literally cannot do what they have been hired to do and be experts in if these bans persist. While university compliance offices have said the bans may only be on campus Wi-Fi and mobile data is still allowed, who will foot that bill for one to pay for a more expensive data plan on their phone? The answer is no one. While working at home does exist, professors are also expected to be on campus regularly to prove that they are actually working. This means any social media professor attempting to research TikTok on campus will have to rely on video streaming via mobile data, which can be quite expensive, either through having to individually pay for unlimited data, or accidentally going over one’s limits.

TikTok is rolling out a charm offensive ahead of Thursday’s congressional hearing, putting CEO Shou Zi Chew in users’ feeds to warn them about a looming ban. ByteDance subsidiary’s official TikTok account received a brief video from Chew, encouraging users to defend the app.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was reportedly considering offering a bill to ban a broader “category of applications” that could be applied to other apps that pose security risks, according to Axios.

Following revelations that ByteDance employees have accessed the data of US users over the last few years, there has been a growing push to ban the app.

In guidance issued Monday, Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget wrote that executive agencies and those they contract with must remove application from TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, within 30 days of notice. Within 90 days, agencies must ensure that the short form video app cannot be used on devices and that they must cancel any contracts that necessitate the app’s use.

In a rare public interview at last year’s New York Times DealBook summit, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew described “Project Texas,” the company’s plan to move all data from Virginia and Singapore to US-based Oracle servers overseen by a new subsidiary known as TikTok US Data Security Inc.

On Monday a hearing announcement was welcomed by TikTok spokesman Brooke Oberwetter. Oberwetter said TikTok plans to discuss its “comprehensive plans” to protect US user safety during the March 23rd hearing.

What Will Apple Do If We Open a Window on the World? The Case of TikTok, ByteDance, and the Indian Blockade

Apple has a lot to lose in regards to its relationship with the US and China. Much of Cook’s success at Apple can be attributed to his ability to maintain working relationships with the Chinese government and manufacturers.

Some observers expect Washington to take action. “We will see limitations this year,” says Mira Ricardel, a former White House deputy national security adviser now at the Chertoff Group advising businesses on regulations. There is a clear consensus of opinions that will lead to something. Here is what that something may look like.

India has a blockade called TikTok. NetBlocks states that a few small ISPs allow access. The lead developer for the University of Michigan’s project says he was able to use an app in the US to watch videos during his visit to India. The ban has caused many Indian users to turn to rival services, including from the likes ofGoogle and Facebook.

Trump’s order would have immediately prohibited app stores from distributing TikTok, and nearly two months later would have barred cloud providers and internet infrastructure services from doing business with the company. Penalties could have been imposed on people or companies caught dodging the order. Ivan Kanapathy is the vice president of policy at a policy consulting firm and he says that his goal was to start with the root of the problem.

The company has previously said that it welcomes “the opportunity to set the record straight about TikTok, ByteDance, and the commitments we are making.”

The TikTok spokesman said that they hope Congress will take a more deliberative approach to the issues at hand if they are given details of their comprehensive plans.

What would make you not weaponize data if you were willing to fly a balloon over the continental airspace and have people see it? Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said that he wanted to use an app on the phone of 60 million Americans to influence political debate in this country.

“There’s no question about the fact that they are trying to gather as much data as they can about all aspects of our country, and even the most minuscule, small items can add up to providing them with more data,” says Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. “There’s a huge amount of data out there, which will never be touched, never be used, but it’s the small pieces that add up. They are working it. They are patient. But they clearly see us as a threat, and they’re collecting data.”

“None of the suggested … efforts were particularly relevant to my concerns,” senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado, told congressional reporters after hosting Chew in his office last week.

The TikTok Expansion and the War on Chinese Technology in the Light of Nakasone’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee

“It’s not only the fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Our status has been debated in public, in a way that ignores the facts of the agreement and what we have achieved so far. Brooke Oberwetter from TikTok said in a statement they will continue to do their part to deliver a comprehensive national security plan for the American people.

The Commerce Department would have the authority to come up with measures to protect against foreign-linked technologies under a Senate bill that is expected to be unveiled on Tuesday.

Like the US government push to ban hardware and other gear made by Huawei, another Chinese technology giant, US officials are often short on specifics when asked to show public proof of collusion between the Chinese government and ByteDance.

According to the director, people are always looking for the telltale sign of a new technology. I think it’s a loaded gun.

TikTok has 7,000 Americans, which is less than the 10,000 or more that it was aiming for in 2020, but a big leap over the 1,400 US employees that year.

It is not surprising that Chew is finally pointing out an obvious fact, that TikTok is betting that Americans will not like it if it is locked out of the US.