correction
An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that TikTok had denied U.S. data was being accessed in China. TikTok has acknowledged U.S. data is being accessed in China. This version has been corrected.
The TikTok debate is forcing President Biden’s White House to weigh how to protect the nation against the real threats that some foreign-based companies pose — without indulging in national security creep that unnecessarily cuts off foreign investment in the United States.
One of the biggest problems with TikTok is knowing what the biggest problem with TikTok is. Most TikTok hawks have focused on the surveillance of user activity that the app could conduct and the user data the company can access, or what could be called information collection. Concerns that TikTok might collect U.S. citizens’ information have some justification. Forbes recently reported on a plan for targeted surveillance of journalists who had reported critically on the company’s links to the Chinese regime. TikTok says it terminated all involved after corroborating the allegations in an internal investigation. The possibility that TikTok staff might target users working in roles that grant them special power, special knowledge or both is worrisome, which is why Congress was right to ban installation of the app on federally issued devices.
But the data TikTok collects on the average user (likes and dislikes, political preferences, location and demographics) is hardly secret; anyone can buy such data on the open market for user information, or get it through other means. Until Congress cleans up the United States’ privacy act, TikTok is hardly the only or the most extreme online privacy risk Americans face — and banning or forcing ByteDance’s sale of TikTok is unlikely to be a solution.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
End of carouselAlso on the Editorial Board’s agenda
- The world’s ice is melting quickly.
- The Taliban rolls back women’s rights.
- Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is at it again.
- Hong Kong’s crackdown on free speech continues.
A new study finds that half the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps will melt even if global warming is restrained to 1.5 degrees Celsius — which it won’t be. This would feed sea-level rise and imperil water sources for hundreds of millions. Read a recent editorial on how to cope with rising seas, and another on the policies needed to fight climate change.
The Taliban came back to power in Afghanistan last year promising to be different from when they ruled the country before 2001. This pledge has gone up in smoke. The Taliban banned women from attending universities, effective immediately. Earlier the Taliban banned girls from middle and high school, restricted them from jobs, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Read recent editorials on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
A court in mid-December sentenced Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, a political rival of the president, to more than two years in prison on the charge of “insulting public figures.” If confirmed on appeal, his conviction would bar Mr. Imamoglu from seeking public office. Mr. Erdogan has a long history of suppressing critics and competition. Read our recent editorial.
A Hong Kong judge sentenced Jimmy Lai, a media magnate known for publishing a defiantly independent newspaper, to almost six years in prison. His trial for violating Hong Kong’s repressive national security law, charges for which he could face life in prison, has been postponed until next year. Read our most recent editorial on the case.
1/5
Many experts believe that information manipulation, including censorship of user posts as well as the dissemination of propaganda and disinformation, is actually the greater threat TikTok poses. The algorithm the company uses to recommend posts to users is ostensibly content-neutral, pushing people who like a given video toward material with which others who like that video have also engaged. But the service promotes or filters out categories of content, too — sometimes privileging, say, the World Cup, sometimes disfavoring posts that could be harmful for mental health. The code that achieves these aims can be opaque, and because every user sees a different feed, measuring outcomes can prove tricky.
So if Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime wanted, for example, to give a gentle nudge to videos favoring a certain presidential candidate or stamp out videos referencing the Tiananmen Square massacre, he could theoretically pass the dictate to ByteDance, which could pass it to TikTok, which could carry it out under threat — and no one would be any the wiser.
TikTok is attempting to address both areas of alarm in its negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The company is prepared to store its data only on Oracle servers located in the United States, to submit its recommendation algorithms to monitoring and to place its operations under the control of a board of security experts reporting to the U.S. government. The idea is that an entity separate from TikTok would be responsible for actually running it here, so that if Mr. Xi did tell ByteDance to tell TikTok to censor or propagandize, TikTok would have to tell its U.S.-controlled partner — and that partner would have full authority to refuse.
This could work, with some fine-tuning. Today, Chinese employees have too-easy access to U.S. data. Whatever controls are supposed to ensure that the data stored in the United States doesn’t leave the country will have to be watertight, and any “monitoring” of the algorithm will have to be sufficient to detect meddling. Yet if these details can be hammered out, striking such a deal would be far better than banning an app that has proved extremely popular.
A country that cherishes free speech shouldn’t be eager to stamp out the ability of millions to express themselves on their site of choice. The United States should also be wary of setting a worldwide precedent wherein a democracy blacklists firms based primarily on where they come from.
The right way to approach TikTok is the right way to approach all foreign investment: assess a company’s susceptibility to undue influence from an adversary; gauge the likelihood that susceptibility will lead to a specific harm; and determine whether the government can reduce that likelihood through measures short of an all-out ban. The same goes for global trade generally. The United States should promote the dynamism and prosperity that result from international exchange, curtailing it only in cases of glaring need.