Time for Tough Treatment of Tech’s TikTok | Opinion

For most people, TikTok is a harmless social media platform enjoyed by 300 million users in Europe and the United States. However, behind the dance battles and the tutorials lurks another side to the app: its Chinese-made algorithm.
The engine that drives the platform is, at best, meticulously tracking us and feeding back to a company whose owner has an in-house Communist Party committee. At worst, it is quietly coercing the free world with Chinese Communist Party endorsed propaganda.
Despite its claims to the contrary, TikTok is closely intertwined with the Chinese state through its parent company ByteDance. ByteDance is required to give the Chinese government a ‘Golden Share’ in its companies and comply with a myriad of Chinese laws. Its own court filings have shown it relies on ByteDance engineers in China to maintain its algorithm. TikTok’s highly secretive algorithm has been shared with the Chinese government alongside other Chinese tech giants.
In the United States, 52 percent of users regularly get their news on TikTok. They might reasonably expect it to provide balance and context; yet leaks from 2019 showed how the network instructed its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong. Precisely the taboo words of the Communist Party’s censorship inside China. Recent research cited by the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress highlights an expanded range of topics, where content censorship or amplification appears to be occurring.
Likewise, the app has twice as many trackers within it compared to Facebook and Instagram, monitoring every screen tap and key stroke, private messages and even data on phone contacts of TikTok’s non-users. This surveillance is not just used for feeding you recommendations: in 2023 ByteDance admitted to using the app to track journalists from Forbes.
The United States Congress has acted, passing legislation that forces TikTok to part ways with its Chinese ownership. Failure to do so by early next year will see TikTok’s operations end in the U.S. TikTok is still challenging the decision but may have to sell its American operations. However, because the algorithm is considered Chinese technology, selling it to Americans would require special approval from the Chinese government, which is doubtful. The platform and its algorithm will likely be separated.
This would be a good outcome both for users and for our security. Whoever buys the platform will be able to free it from its Chinese components. A bid comes from Project Liberty initiated by American businessman and free internet advocate Frank McCourt. Their People’s Bid for TikTok would introduce a new decentralised algorithm giving users the ultimate control over the content they want to see, turning it from TikTok to ‘FreeTok’. ‘Freetok’ would put each person in control of their own data, and on what content and adverts the algorithm feeds you.
Although the legislation affects only U.S. TikTok, Europeans would also benefit from the separation of the platform from its algorithm. Europe’s 130 million TikTok users would be able to move over to the ‘FreeTok’ version from the United States. The consequences could be significant beyond just TikTok, showing other platforms the benefits of giving users more control over their own data. This would much better align with the original intention of the creators of the internet: to have a decentralised system that puts power into users’ hands, rather than centralising it to a select few tech-oligarchs or placing it under the whip hand of autocracies.
In Europe, regulators are growing increasingly sceptical about TikTok’s operation. The European Union has passed multiple laws aimed at curbing the power of big tech. However, the best way for Europe to create a more open internet would be to support an entrepreneurial approach in the U.S. for splitting TikTok from its Chinese overlords. European investors can join and build a freer and more open internet and make a return in the process.
Social media has transformed our politics, breaking down the barriers between politicians and voters. But like most tools it can also be weaponized by dictators and autocrats who turn our free and open societies against us. TikTok’s darker side has been exposed and our leaders now face a choice: to continue letting China chip away at our democracy with a manipulating algorithm; or to give one of our most popular social media platforms back to its users.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen is former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.