ohn Last Week Tonight, John Oliver analyzed the impending ban of TikTok in the United States, the “social networking app that many are addicted to thanks to its cooking and dance tutorials that make it impossible for anyone born before 1985 to look good.” ”.
TikTok has 170 million active users in the United States – a third of American adults and the majority of people under 30 use the app. “All of which makes it pretty surprising that it could be on the verge of disappearing,” Oliver said. In April of this year, the Senate passed a bill giving the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, an ultimatum: sell TikTok or face a ban in the US over national security risks.
Although nearly 40% of adults under 30 say they regularly get their news on TikTok and more than 7 million small businesses use it, lawmakers from both parties insist it is a major threat to the nation. As someone said: “TikTok is like a gun to the heads of Americans.”
“Those are some strong words, because we all know that Congress will not stand by and watch someone point a metaphorical gun at the heads of Americans,” Oliver said, impassively. “Real guns, for some reason, are a complicated issue, but metaphorical gun violence is not going to stand.”
Oliver delved into how the debate over TikTok “is actually a lot more nuanced than you think,” starting with the app’s history. TikTok exploded in the United States during the pandemic, “when many of us were suddenly stuck at home with nothing to do but learn how to make cloud bread, make coffee, and try to master wild dancing,” he explained. “It’s really hard to imagine a better scenario for TikTok to thrive than a pandemic. Suddenly, they had a captive audience whose only other entertainment options were to immerse themselves in sourdough, Windexing their groceries for the third time, or, of course, retreat into a void where they slowly went crazy.”
Lawmakers were already raising the alarm about TikTok’s Chinese parent company in 2020; Trump banned it by executive order, which never went into effect, as a court ruled that he went too far and blocked the measure. In the years since, TikTok has attempted to publicly distance itself from China by launching Project Texas, which promised to store American users’ data on American servers maintained by a third-party American company, although many experts have raised doubts that such protections are anything. . more than a “wink and a nod.”
Oliver examined the government’s two main concerns: the data TikTok collects from its users and the power it has to send them content. TikTok is distinguished by its proprietary algorithm that quickly discovers what you like and stays on it, so it can feed you more and more, “just like a loving grandmother or Marvel Studios,” Oliver joked.
TikTok knows your likes and dislikes and maybe, in the case of some users, your sexuality. It also knows the device you’re using, your location, IP address, search history, content of your messages, and exactly what you’re viewing. In the US, under its own privacy policy, it may collect biometric information, such as facial and voice prints, from any content you post.
Oliver noted that some concern about TikTok’s data, such as the company collecting it for future blackmail, is overblown: “a big component of blackmail requires shame, and if you’re not on TikTok, you’re missing out on how little shame there is on TikTok.” “. its users have done it,” he said. But the company is vulnerable to the whims of the Chinese government, which “has shown a clear willingness to go after American data.”
“If China wanted to pressure ByteDance to do something for it, the company wouldn’t be able to put up much resistance,” he said, although he noted that TikTok doesn’t collect any more data than typical conventional social networks. grid.
“I’m not giving TikTok a pass here, I’m just pointing out that their behavior is pretty consistent with Silicon Valley’s bullshit standards,” he said.
As for fears that it could fuel propaganda, Oliver noted that the Chinese version of the app follows the government’s censorship rules; In the United States, the company claims to have transparent moderation rules, although some researchers have expressed concern that material critical of China’s ruling party, such as the Tiananmen Square story, is underrepresented on the platform. Oliver questioned some of the study’s methodology, although “ultimately, it is difficult to know for sure” whether ByteDance censors anti-CCP content, since the algorithm is proprietary.
US intelligence agencies have admitted that they have no evidence that China has used TikTok for propaganda purposes in the United States, although there is a “significant risk” that this could happen. “But as long as this argument is about what might be the case, we should probably ask ourselves: Could there be some ulterior motive behind the US government’s approach?” Oliver said. “Because along with concerns about national security, it seems like there may be an undercurrent of xenophobia.” And also “many big American tech companies that would very much like to take back their market share from TikTok,” including YouTube and Meta, which have their own TikTok knock-offs.
As justification for the ban, lawmakers have also referenced “classified” evidence of threats that the American public is not aware of. “Well, we haven’t seen it, so maybe you need to show it to us,” Oliver said. “Because saying ‘trust us, it’s really scary’ only works if the person saying it is someone you fundamentally trust in the first place.”
“Claiming that you are protecting Americans’ privacy by banning TikTok is like claiming that you are fighting climate change by banning the Kia Sorento,” he added. “Sure, technically it’s nothing, but in a broader sense, basically nothing.”
In the end, Oliver still hadn’t found a clear path forward. “There’s so much we don’t know and coming from two sides, I’m not even remotely confident,” he said. “Because you’re either trusting the word of a multinational tech company that profits from your data, or the US government, which seems more than happy to turn a blind eye whenever US companies do the exact same thing.”
The only thing experts agree on is that the risks to Americans’ data online “by no means end with China or TikTok,” as the United States lacks adequate protections for human data privacy. “We have been behind the rest of the world on this issue for an embarrassingly long time,” Oliver concluded. “Ultimately, this TikTok ban may not even be necessary, but it is definitely not enough.”