The Devilish rouse behind TikTok

While TikTok may be a high school sensation, there are frightening motives behind the social media powerhouse.

Rebecca Bodden, Contributing Writer

If you asked friends today for a list of apps they use quite frequently, they might say Twitter, Instagram, YouTube maybe even Facebook and of course Tiktok.  Since 2018, Tiktok (formerly known as music.ly) has been skyrocketing in popularity. The 60 second video sharing app has taken over the nation and has pretty shady terms and conditions.

In late 2019, TikTok was put under investigation by The Committee of Foreign Investment because lawmakers were concerned about the app’s growing influence in the United States.  The main concern about tiktok is its security policy.  The app owned by bytedance has been collecting and selling user data to China. “China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 means the Chinese Government can compel businesses to share information with them,” said Andrew Hastie, Federal MP and Member of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee.

The main concern is censorship.  “We’ve actually had the content moderation guidelines used in TikTok leaked to the media and what those content moderation guidelines show is that TikTok’s approach to content moderation is more like what you and I would think is censorship,” said analyst and expert in Chinese social media, Fergus Ryan.  “Censorship and propaganda don’t have to be done in a very obvious way. For example, you don’t have to have a video completely deleted for censorship to take place. Instead, they could use something called ‘shadow-banning’.  That means when content is sent out by a user, and they think that their followers have seen it, but in fact, it’s not being shown to anyone at all.”

TikTok is a very influential app hosting millions of content creators.  The addicting app has been collecting data and censoring its creators videos.  The data can be a very dangerous tool considering most users of tiktok are teenagers and are the country’s future leaders and voices.