The implications of the “TikTok ban” passed by the US House of Representatives on Wednesday are significant, given TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing social media platform and the US is its largest customer. Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance has just under six months to divest its interest in TikTok or it will be banned in its largest market, a move that would cripple the company.
This decision will change Australia’s legislative approach too – and ideally open a broader discussion about why we must regulate social media platforms and the data they extract from us. Australia have been global leaders in their approach to platform regulation over the last five years, as we saw in the world-first News Media Bargaining Code in 2021. But it is understandably hesitant in relation to TikTok: the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said on Thursday that the government had “no plans” to follow the US at the moment.
In the short term, the divestiture of TikTok would solve one of Australia’s primary security concerns around the app without us having to do all that much. So it makes sense to wait. Our intelligence organisations have been concerned about the link between ByteDance and the Chinese Communist party (CCP) for several years now: like the US, Australia is concerned about the data that TikTok collects, about the potential for that data to be shared with a foreign adversary, and about the potential for content to be weaponised by that adversary for political or social purposes. Australia banned the use of TikTok on government devices last year because it posed “significant security and privacy risks … arising from extensive collection of user data and exposure to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government”.
We have form here: Australia also banned the Chinese-owned telecommunications firm Huawei from participating in the 5G rollout in 2022 for similar reasons. TikTok, for its part, has repeatedly denied that it has ever or would ever share user data from the US or from Australia with the CCP – though it could be compelled to do so under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law.
If TikTok is sold off to yet another US billionaire or a company like Google or Apple, then our concern over it being forced to comply with Chinese laws around data sharing for intelligence purposes might be allayed.
The concern over how much data it collects on users in Australia, however, should not be. All social media platforms collect extensive user data, and all social media platforms are engines for propaganda and influence. This much is beyond debate. Companies like Facebook, X, Instagram and Snapchat are in the business of collecting your data and using that data to change your behaviour. They are also responsible for the negative social effects that arise from this business model, and we must hold them to account.
Social media companies are mostly motivated by profit. That is why they extract data from you, and that is why they seek to subtly change your behaviour or get you enraged (and engaged) with certain types of content and advertising. The negative social and political effects are a by-product of this profit motive.
The fear over TikTok according to some security experts is how the social effects could be engineered by China. We have enough problems with misinformation on social media here without it being deliberately designed to cause social unrest or facilitate foreign interference in our elections. This is not to say that other social media platforms haven’t interfered in our politics or sold our data to a foreign power. They have: political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica shared the Facebook data of 87 million users with entities linked to Russian intelligence in 2016, for example. Facebook was fined $5bn for being profoundly irresponsible with our data. The leak was damaging to US politics and ultimately influenced a democratic election. It demonstrates how social media can be used to shape politics on foreign soil and change geopolitics.
In essence, it may seem a reasonable move by the US to require ByteDance to divest its share in TikTok, if only to allay fears that the CCP might obtain data or engineer social unrest on their shores. Australia could consider that option, or wait to see if that security problem resolves itself in six months anyway when another US billionaire scoops up the platform.
The problem it does not solve is that all social media platforms collect large quantities of data about us, and that data can be used to influence what we buy or who we pick fights with or how we vote. Only strong data privacy regulation will address this.
• Belinda Barnet is senior lecturer in media and communications at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne
