The Senate has just released the conclusions of its investigation into TikTok. And the verdict is clear: the application represents a danger. If it does not provide sufficient guarantees before the end of the year, the social network could be banned from France.
TikTok is in the sights of many governments, who are worried about the astronomical amount of data recovered by the platform, its links with Beijing, but also its addictiveness and its impact on the health of the youngest. In France, a senatorial commission of inquiry into the social network was launched in March 2023, when several institutions had just banned their officials from installing the application on their phones (see our article), in order to ensure that the social network “is not a potential instrument of disinformation or manipulation for the benefit of undemocratic regimes, nor that its use is safe with regard to the necessary data protection”, to use the words of Claude Malhuret on Senate website. A major challenge, given that it has 22 million users in France alone!
After hearing numerous experts on the subject, as well as French enforcement representatives (see our article), the Senate issued its conclusions in a report entitled “TikTok tactics, opacity, addiction and shadow puppets”. And as much to say that these, presented this July 6 by Senator Claude Malhuret, are quite overwhelming for the platform. “Forgive that oxymoron, but TikTok is the epitome of opaque transparency”, he declared at the outset, stressing the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of obtaining answers to the many questions posed by parliamentarians. An opacity which, mixed with the findings of the commission, led him to declare that the Chinese government was carrying out, through TikTok, a real “cognitive warfare” and issue an ultimatum: “For national security as much as for the well-being of users, we are giving TikTok six months to comply with our laws, failing which we will ask for its suspension.”
TikTok report: not-so-confidential data
One of the first – and not the least – problems with TikTok is the privacy of user data. First, the senators dwelt on the staggering number of authorizations requested by the social network to operate on a smartphone. The organization Exodus Privacy detected in the application five mandatory trackers and forty optional permissions, some of which were considered potentially dangerous. This includes access to all applications installed on the phone, geolocation of the device via GPS and network, detailed information on the operating system of the device, access to the calendar, as well as access to the clipboard. Requests that go far beyond those of a simple social network and which are absolutely not necessary to make the application work. Even more worrying, only sixteen of these authorizations would appear on the general conditions of the platform.
But what does TikTok do with all this data? The commission discovered that, while stored on servers based in the United States, Malaysia and Singapore, it is also shared with service providers or TikTok group companies – unnamed – located outside the European Union, in particularly in China, and which have remote access. Moreover, on March 23, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, had been auditioned by the American Congress and had ended up admitting that personal data was indeed consulted by certain employees in China – something he already had. revealed in November 2022 (see our article). One feature in particular, which allows employees to “push” a video via a button to make it go viral, has raised concerns that it could be used to push political messages. “The data collected is very numerous, does not respect anonymization, and then circulates much more than from other platforms”, explains the commission. Where are they going? For her, there is no possible doubt, it is Beijing.
TikTok Report: China’s Trojan Horse Strategy
One of the sinews of war obviously concerned TikTok’s links with the Chinese government. Indeed, even if ByteDance – its publisher, which also has a Chinese branch – firmly denies that the data can be collected by the Beijing authorities and affirms that the company is not concerned by Chinese jurisdiction, ByteDance being located at the Cayman Islands, the commission of inquiry was not convinced. The report explains that “ByteDance Ltd, based in the Cayman Islands for reasons of opacity, is partly owned by a Chinese fund.” Its founder Zhang Yiming happens to own 20% of the capital. However, the latter is closely controlled by the Chinese government, which calls into question its decision-making independence. Moreover, it is difficult to know exactly who the shareholders of the group are, since ByteDance is hosted in a tax haven. Not to mention that TikTok needs the technologies, patents and engineers of the Beijing branch, the real heart of the ByteDance company, which is controlled via “golden shares” – actions that give veto power over certain decisions of the company. firm – by the authorities. All of this leads the committee to conclude: “Contrary to what they say, TikTok and its parent company are dependent on Beijing on all fronts: technical, capitalistic, legal and political. It is a proven strategy of cognitive warfare, massive data collection, espionage , blackmail and disinformation being their main weapons”.
The investigation has brought to light acts of espionage and remote geolocation of journalists investigating TikTok, transfers of data from TikTok users to China and to engineers based in China, as well as proven measures of censorship and disinformation for the benefit of China, its geopolitical priorities and the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. Moreover, according to Claude Malhuret, it would be foolish for the Beijing government not to be interested in TikTok. With one billion users worldwide, including twenty-two million in France, “The Chinese authorities cannot not be interested in it. It would be professional misconduct on the part of their services”. Finally, the senator is surprised that TikTok is still not profitable and operates at a loss, unlike its competitors, which tends to suggest that the objective of the social network is not to be sought on the side of profitability, but politics…
TikTok report: a dangerous social network for the youngest
Another problem encountered on the platform: misinformation. It emerged from the survey that, on average, it only takes 40 minutes of use to come across misleading videos dealing with current events. A study conducted by Global Witness shows that 90% of disinformation content is approved by the platform, where Facebook – which is not a model in this area – only reaches 20%. The platform is also accused of not respecting intellectual property in music, and intellectual piracy by SACEM.
The commission of inquiry could not not be interested in the recommendation algorithm of TikTok, “extremely addictive, which retains its users, mainly children and adolescents, for hours on their screens”. According to the reportminors aged between 4 and 18 – remember that the minimum age is supposed to be years – spent an average of 1h47 per day on it in 2022. Users consult the application on average forty times a day, against an average of fifteen times a day for Twitter. “Practitioner psychologists who receive adolescents […] are frightened by a number of effects (from TikTok, Editor’s note) on these”, warns Claude Malhuret. A problem from which Beijing protects its population since it has imposed on Douyin, the Chinese variant of TikTok – which is indeed controlled by the authorities – a daily usage limit of forty minutes for children under 14. as well as mandatory five-second breaks between two videos for young users spending too much time on the platform.
TikTok did add a viewing limit of sixty minutes per day a few weeks ago, but this is optional and is not respected by the user (see our article). This is a notification that can be disabled and does not prevent the minor from remaining on the application. Difficult to measure how many users actually close the social network when they receive it! And it’s not with the upcoming arrival of Tako, an AI-powered chatbot intended to advise users in choosing which videos to watch, that things are not likely to improve…
And that’s not all ! Age control on the social network is at best ineffective, at worst non-existent, since 45% of 11-12 year olds are registered on TikTok. Testimonials from clinicians corroborate the platform’s tendency to amplify the psychological difficulties of vulnerable people, not to mention the proliferation of dangerous challenges that endanger the lives of the youngest and of harmful filters, such as Bold Glamour, which can generate dysmorphophobia (see our article). Also, the report recommends requiring TikTok “the establishment of an effective age verification system, providing for an independent third-party verifier”.
TikTok report: a six-month ultimatum under penalty of banishment
The fact that some countries have banned the application to their officials, such as the United States, or even completely banned it from their territory, such as India and Indonesia, encourages the Senate to want to do the same. This is why he gives the platform six months to comply with French legislation. A period which may seem short, but some of the requests of the senators would be achievable overnight, according to Claude Malhuret. Also, by January 1, 2024, TikTok will have to:
- provide answers to questions about the capital, status and shareholders of Bytedance;
- give details of how its algorithm works, as well as information about where and which companies supply its engineers in China;
- clarify the nature of the user data transferred to China as well as the reasons for its transfer;
- clarify the company’s articles of association;
- record an effective separation with China;
- comply with DSAwhich comes into force at the end of August, in particular on issues of moderation and the fight against disinformation;
- put in place a real means of checking the age when registering users.
If TikTok does not comply before the deadline, “we will ask for emergency measures to be taken, which could go as far as a suspension” application, concludes the committee. On good terms!