TikTok continues to worry. And it is not the senatorial commission of inquiry that will reassure us! The answers of the two representatives of the company, in addition to being off the mark, confirm an abusive data collection…
TikTok collects a phenomenal amount of personal data from its users every second. To use the social network, you have to agree to trust it blindly. And hope that he does not exploit the potential of these real gold mines while ensuring their safety. And when political tensions get involved, especially to know whether or not the platform has links with the Chinese government, things get complicated! And that’s not counting the studies that have shown that social networks have a heavy impact on the mental health of the youngest. On this point, TikTok is particularly known for its addictiveness, with its short videos that are “consumed” on the channel, and the dangerousness of its “challenges” that some users report.
Also, since June 8, representatives of TikTok have been heard by the Senate Influence Inquiry Committee, whose goal is 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. During this hearing, Éric Garandeau, director of public affairs for TikTok, and Marlène Masure, general manager of operations for France, Benelux and Southern Europe, wanted to defend the social network on several points. And their answers are neither clear, nor convincing, nor reassuring…
TikTok: what is the platform’s link with China?
One of the sinews of war obviously concerned TikTok’s links with the Chinese government. Indeed, even if ByteDance – its publisher – firmly denies that the data can be collected by the Chinese authorities, the firm is indeed a member of the Chinese Federation of Internet Companies. However, as the statutes of this organization indicate, each member company undertakes to follow “the way of Xi Jinping” – the current President of China – while agreeing to be supervised by the Chinese Cyberspace Administration – the Chinese institution in charge of surveillance and censorship of the Web. And this, even if Éric Garandeau affirms that the company is not affected by Chinese jurisdiction, ByteDance being located in the Cayman Islands. On March 23, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, was heard by the American Congress and ended up admitting that personal data was indeed consulted by certain employees in China – something he had already 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.
Once again, TikTok denied this, and Éric Garandeau replied that only 0.0006% of the content highlighted was by this method, as reported French Radio. He also recalled that the platform was banned in mainland China and that freedom of expression – including politics – was total on the social network. A response that did not really convince the senators, who recalled that the GAFAM social networks were also banned, while pointing out that ByteDance had a TikTok clone application – with the same algorithms and practices – called Douyin, which is meanwhile well operational on the continent.
Abusive TikTok permissions: mind-boggling data collection
Another problem pointed out by the Commission: the staggering number of authorizations requested by TikTok to operate on a smartphone. However, for Marlène Masure, “when you go to the stores, Google Play or Apple Store, you have the possibility to see what data is collected by each platform. It’s interesting to watch because TikTok is one of the platforms that collects the least data. […] We have total transparency on the data collected”she assures, also defending the “ability, for the user, to be in control of a good part of his data”.
Nevertheless, the organization Exodus Privacy detected five mandatory trackers and forty optional authorizations, some of which are considered potentially dangerous. This includes 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 press -paper. 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. Even if the company has repeated many times that Internet users are able to download their data whenever they want, it has forgotten to say that it is a mandatory device in France and that the files in .JSON format were often unusable by the general public.
TikTok addiction: measures deemed insufficient
Finally, there is the question of the addiction generated by the social network. In effect, according to the Senateminers spent an average of 1h47 per day on it in 2022. As reported BFM TVthe rapporteur of the commission of inquiry Claude Malhuret, who is a doctor, explains that he “spoken with experts, psychiatrists, psychologists, families, associations: I can tell you, it’s not going at all”. “The reality is kids who can’t sleep, videos that scroll by, it’s addiction. […] We spoke with families who have absolutely no idea what to do“, he warns.
Marlène Massure recalled the various measures put in place to protect the youngest, such as the deletion of user accounts suspected of being under the age of 13, the ban on accessing instant messaging before the age of 16 or even the viewing limit of sixty minutes per day (see our article). It is a notification that can be deactivated and does not prevent the minor from remaining on the application, even if the general director of operations France says that three quarters of under 18s have not deactivated it. But 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…
This isn’t the first time TikTok has had a run-in with the law. The social network is already banned in India and is subject to a ban on use among public officials in the United States – the state of Montana has outright banned the application, and the government of Joe Biden is seeking to make it the same throughout the country. In France, social networks, streaming services and mobile games have been officially banned since the end of March on the professional smartphones of French civil servants (see our article).